Cause EffectPROLOGUE: Intruder Alert

There were thousands of security cameras monitoring Cobalt Pierre, so it just made sense to stream the footage directly into your brain.

The Cobalt Pierre moon base was a research outpost occupying 40 square miles on the Sea of Serenity, and guarding it required hundreds of security officers working 12-hour shifts day in, day out. Francis Anderson had been doing it longer than most – 18 years next March. He was one of the first to volunteer when they developed the cerebral tap.

He was eager enough at the time not to wonder if they'd gotten the bugs out; he assumed they wouldn't install it in humans before perfecting it on rats or guinea pigs or something. Monkeys, maybe. But now that he'd been around the block he knew that before anything becomes standard it's always experimental. Francis was the guinea pig.

It worked out, though – eventually. He suffered intermittent seizures in the first year, and they didn't get the migraines fully under control for another three, but it was so much a part of him now that losing it really would be like losing an eye, or waking up one morning unable to speak.

"North perimeter one – clear … North perimeter two – clear …""How are things looking on the sunny side?" Francis asked."Southeast perimeter one through eleven … clear."Francis supervised a team of 33, most of them young – tapped less than

10 years. From a basement office furnished mostly with wireless servers, they covered perimeter surveillance, and with 40 square miles to protect it was quite a perimeter. Each member was linked to dozens of long-range, high-definition cameras, and sorting through all that visual data was so challenging that using your actual vision only caused confusion; most officers wore blackened goggles to improve their focus, but Francis only needed to close his eyes.

"Southeast perimeter thirteen …" The officer hesitated."Talk to me, Jenkins.""I see something. Magnifying three-hundred percent. It looks like …

it's a rock, sir."No one made a sound, but even through closed eyes Francis could sense

the other officers snickering to themselves."Good job, Jenkins.""It's a large rock, though.""If it meant us harm we'd have you to thank for stopping it."Jenkins had been tapped only four years and was assigned to the moon

base just three months ago, but even though Francis teased him the others knew better than to try; Francis had dirt on them too.

"Incoming call from surveillance team 12," said another officer.Francis opened his eyes. "Put her through."Despite all this technology, "putting her through" still meant

patching into a receiver connected to the wall."Hello, Diana.""Just checking in," she said. "What's your status?""Same as when you checked in an hour ago. In all likelihood the same

as it'll be an hour from now.""The summit is in three days. You can never be too careful.""But if you jump at every shadow you might miss something real.""Any shadows I should know about?""Jenkins found a rock.""How long did it take you to find your first rock?""Things were different then. Everything was new.""Everything is new to everybody, Frank.""No, I think some things are newer than others.""If I hear you say 'Kids these days,' I'm hanging up.""How are preparations in your neck of the woods?""Intense. You'd think we're about to host a dozen or so foreign

dignitaries. There's so much commotion I guess I check in so often just to hear a friendly voice."

"I did pick up on that.""I'll let you get back to work.""Talk to you in an hour."Francis never paid much attention to the annual Tredecim Summit,

though he probably should have; after all, it was where they decided to build Cobalt Pierre in the first place almost 30 years ago. But it was so far removed from him – elite politicians deciding amongst themselves the

future of extraplanetary science – that there was nothing he could do about it even if he wanted to. So he just kept his head down and hoped no wars broke out. So far so good.

This was the first time the summit would be held at the moon base. They called it "a symbolic leap towards the future"; great things were expected, and the added pressure put Diana on edge, but for Francis the job hadn't changed. Activity inside the facility might have been overwhelming, but the perimeter looked the same as it always did: black steel walls, grey moon surface, and space … also the occasional rock.

It didn't even concern Francis when Jenkins made another sighting: a person this time.

"Another protester?" Francis asked."I think so," said Jenkins. "Magnifying …"Protesters were common at every summit – anti-globalization activists

mostly, usually peaceful. Maybe that was the real reason for holding the summit off-world: fewer anti-globalization types when you leave the globe.

But fewer didn't mean none. The nearby Serenity One Colony had all kinds, including Luna Libre activists who occasionally showed up with picket signs defending colonists' rights against government encroachment.

"'Don't tread on lunar rights,'" Jenkins read on the protester's t-shirt. "He's just standing out there shouting … on the moon!"

Jenkins still couldn't wrap his head around the artificial atmosphere. He understood how it worked on paper, but didn't trust it; when he first arrived he held his breath between the transport shuttle and the Cobalt Pierre security entrance. Francis caught him still doing it sometimes when he left after a shift.

"Just let me know if he does more than shout, Jenkins."Francis lived in Serenity One. So did Jenkins and most of the Cobalt

Pierre staff. Maybe he would have even recognized the protester, though it wasn't likely. Serenity One started as a colony for government and military personnel; civilians were fairly new, and they weren't in the same social circles, but he'd have Jenkins cloud the footage to him just in case.

"Sir ...""Yes, Jenkins?" Francis couldn't hide the impatience in his voice. Was

the protester dancing now? Or conspiring with the rock?"I think this might be something --""Honestly, you don't have to worry about every little --"

Francis was startled by the sudden alert sirens that went off. He was unaccustomed to them; they only ever went off during drills, and he always knew about drills in advance so it must be -- it couldn't be -- but it had to be ...

"INTRUDER ALERT!" sounded the alarm. "INTRUDER ALERT!"Not a drill. This was real. And Francis's training kicked back in.

"Jenkins, do you have a visual?""I do, sir.""Is it the protester?""No, definitely not.""Cloud it to the group.""Already done, sir."Francis accessed Jenkins's footage, which was a sensation like

suddenly recovering a vivid memory. It was an image from southeast perimeter 37: a smoking hole in the steel wall, like a bomb had gone off.

"Did it blast all the way through?""I can't tell, sir. Should I call up team 12?""No!" said Francis. "We can get the cameras we need from Paulson's

team.""Paulson's team?""Team 7, Jenkins – now!"When they got the interior feed, it wasn't what Francis hoped to see.

The explosion had completely breached the wall, and now someone was inside. He rewound to the moment of the breach, but even then it didn't make sense. It didn't look like any explosion he'd ever seen. One moment the corridor was intact, and the next it burst inward and there was a man, wide-eyed and disoriented, standing inside. Even when he slowed the footage to one-hundredth time the breach appeared instantaneous – no evidence of a bomb or missile or malfunction. And then the strange man ran.

"Where is he now?""We're locked down, but he's still getting through somehow," said an

officer."Getting through to where? Where is he going? – Jenkins, stay on the

perimeter until we know what's going on. This may just be the start of it – someone, I want a location on this guy now! Where is –"

The door behind them burst open and the strange man was inside with them. Francis opened his eyes and his team took off their goggles, except

Jenkins, who remained dutifully on watch. "What was that?" Jenkins asked. "What's happening?"

"You have to listen to me," said the intruder. "If you don't act quickly, everyone in this building will die!"

1: Black Site

The military men didn't tell Cameron Matthews much when they asked her to drop everything and go with them to the moon. It was unnerving, actually, how quiet her minders were during the ten-hour shuttle ride.

"Does this have something to do with the Summit?" she asked, getting no response from either soldier seated across from her. "We already told you there isn't enough data yet to issue a report on the Mars Project, and even if there were you should be talking to the chief liaison, not me."

Matthews didn't deal with politicians or diplomats. She was one of the senior researchers on a station orbiting Mars conducting a study that could one day lead to colonization, but that kind of progress you measured in years, not weeks. What was so urgent that they needed her now?

When they landed on Terra Luna she thought she would be taken to Cobalt Pierre, but she wasn't, and they weren't headed toward Serenity One either. Instead, she was transferred to a land rover and driven in the opposite direction. Through the rover's dome window she could look out in all directions and see the distant Earth overhead and watch Cobalt and Serenity, the moon's only known civilization, recede behind the horizon.

This wasn't her first time on the moon. She had lived in Serenity One for six months when she first joined the Allied Science and Technology Administration. She was a research assistant collecting data on the long-term viability of the artificial atmosphere. After that, she moved to Cobalt Pierre and marveled at the size and sophistication of their facilities; their astronometrics lab had the first gravitational inhibitor she had ever seen in person, and their particle collider made the one in Kiev look like a measly dynamic spectromoscope – seriously.

She had been about twenty kilometers off the lunar surface studying electromagnetic field distortions when ... well, that was years ago. They thought she was crazy, but it didn't stop them from assigning her to the Mars Project. Maybe they thought it was a way to get rid of her, but it was exactly where she wanted to be. The idea of colonizing Mars was what made her pursue science in the first place; it had fascinated her ever since she saw "Red Dust Frontier," that classic sci-fi thriller where lots of people's heads explode. She was in the fourth grade at the time, and her mother made her promise never to tell her dad she'd let her watch it.

The land rover stopped. "We're here," said the driver.

"Where's here?""Black site."The black site, as he called it, was just a big black box, the size of

a large closet."Is it any bigger on the inside?"A sliding door opened, revealing an elevator. The driver opened the

rover's side hatch to let her out, but he didn't join her and didn't explain, just closed it behind her and drove back the way he came.

It felt like the start of an odd dream; she'd take the elevator down and open to a geometry test she hadn't studied for -- and she'd be naked.

There were no buttons in the elevator, just a speaker and pinhole camera by the door. As it descended, a woman's voice said, "Please hold your service ID up to the camera, Dr. Matthews."

She fumbled for a moment, then showed it to the camera."Too close."She held it further back."Thank you."This was it, she thought. They'd see she didn't have the necessary

clearance and dispense the nerve gas ... But they didn't. After a few more moments the door opened and a woman was waiting for her, the one from the speaker.

"Dr. Matthews, I'm glad you could make it, I'm Lauren Summers.""Is this an ASTA facility?""It is.""But it's a black site.""That's right.""I've never been to a black site. Am I even authorized to be here?""You are now.""What do you do here?""Theoretical physics, quantum mechanics," said Summers, who hesitated

before adding, "also applied temporal theory.""Did you say applied temporal theory?" That's when Matthews realized,

"This isn't about the Mars Project, is it?"Summers shook her head. "Follow me."There was nothing inside the facility to indicate its function, but

maybe that was by design. The walls were all gray concrete and steel, and the doors were unmarked. Matthews, in her vast experience of never having

been to a black site, would have done the same if she were to design one: separate secret rooms, the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. Everything on a need-to-know basis.

She assumed there wasn't much she needed to know, so she tried to figure out as much as she could from sensory hints. The corridors felt like they were sloped gently downward, and they bent around corners at awkward angles and in seemingly random directions. The air got colder, and odors came and went in sudden bursts: a burning like melting plastic; a chemical so strong it hit the nose and trickled down her throat; some kind of decaying organic matter; and of all things fish, with a sweet citrusy marinade. They had either walked past an experiment or a cafeteria.

As they walked, a door to the left slid open, and a wispy fog crept out along the floor -- liquid nitrogen maybe? A man in a lab coat and protective gloves pushed a cart across the hallway that carried a transparent cube with a viscous substance suspended inside. He disappeared through a door to the right.

Then there was another elevator, but before its doors would even close Summers had to press her palm against a touchscreen and look closely into a retinal scanner. Then a voice-recognition program asked for a spoken password. Just to be at a black site at all required high clearance; wherever they were going now must be the real story – where the secrets kept their secrets. If any elevator were armed with nerve gas, this would be the one.

Matthews counted 46 seconds before the elevator opened on another nondescript lab, more dimly lit, like it was trying not to be noticed. They passed white-coats wearing blackened goggles who looked like space aliens; they did double takes when they saw her. On the far end of the lab was a doorway to a room with a glass partition, and on the other side of that partition was a man with wild hair and wild eyes grasping at the air like he was catching an invisible fly. Matthews and Summers could see him, but he didn't seem to see them.

"What does he do if he wants to sit down?""There was a chair, and a table, but he asked us to remove them, said

they made him uncomfortable," said Summers. "What can you tell me about him?"

"What can I tell you?" said Matthews. "I've never seen him before in my life."

"What do you notice when you look at him?""Besides the obvious?""What's obvious?""His hair looks like crab grass. He's dressed like a clown, and he's

swatting at things that aren't there – at least, nothing I can see. And I think maybe you're afraid of him, or afraid for him, otherwise you wouldn't have him isolated in the restricted sub-basement of a black site. But that says more about you than it does about him, and I assume you already know about you." Matthews paused a moment before she said what she had been thinking: "Does this have something to do with 143?"

EF-143 was the official ASTA designation for the electromagnetic-field test that Matthews had been conducting when she briefly vanished from lunar orbit five years ago.

"He claims to have traveled through time.""Do you believe him? Because nobody believed me. Everyone thought I

was delusional. I was almost medically discharged.""We believed you. We've been studying temporal phenomena since well

before 143.""It might have helped to hear that five years ago.""Our work is classified. There's a lot we don't understand, and we're

not in the habit of sharing it until we do.""What do you know?""We were able to identify an energy signature that's unique to

temporal events and consistent across all cases we've been able to analyze. Reads like radio waves on most equipment, but it's not. We don't know exactly what it is yet. Our researchers call it Tempus X."

The man in the empty room pressed his hand against the glass as if to test its strength. Then he licked it.

"There were traces of Tempus X after 143. That's why you weren't discharged. We found traces on him too."

"And you think he's related somehow to what happened to me?""Maybe, maybe not. We'd like you to talk to him, tell us what you

think.""You've been studying this for years. What could I possibly tell you

that you don't already know?""Probably more than you think. This is unlike any other field of

research; we're studying a technology that doesn't exist yet, from a

culture that doesn't exist yet, and doing the best we can to reverse engineer it somehow based on what little evidence we have."

"So you can use it.""So we can understand it. We have one-hundred eighty-seven of the best

minds on Earth working at this site, and the best thirty-nine of those are working on this project, but none of them have practical experience. They hypothesize, develop theoretical models, analyze data, but they can't tell us what it looks like, sounds like, or feels like."

"If practical experience is so important, why am I only being brought here now?"

"To be honest, we didn't think there was much you could tell us that wasn't already in your official report."

"What changed?"The man in the room sniffed the glass where he had licked it."He did," said Summers. "He's the first person we've ever encountered

with a credible claim to being a time traveler.""Credible?""Half the mental institutions on Earth are full of people who think

they've been there and back again, but none of them crash-landed in a secure facility on the moon out of thin air. Dr. Matthews, we know you disappeared for five hours, and we know someone brought you back. We want you to tell us if you think he might be someone like that, because if he's telling the truth we don't have a lot of time."

"What is he saying?""I think you should hear it from him."

2: Traveler

The traveler didn't notice right away that Matthews had entered the room. She stood in the doorway for a few moments watching him feel his way around the glass partition, staring into its mirrored surface, but not looking at his reflection exactly. As soon as the door slid shut behind her and the air seal engaged he spun around, jaw and fists clenched, but when he saw her he sighed. "Thank the celestial heavens!" he said. "You, at last you, surely you're the one who can help me."

He spoke English, but Matthews noticed an accent. She couldn't place it, like a melange of English and French and maybe an Asian dialect.

"What kind of help do you need?""They've locked me in here. They don't understand, they're easily

frightened – heavens I didn't realize they'd be so easily frightened. As much as you study and prepare – and they confine what frightens them, it's what they did, it's what they do. And they won't figure it out in time."

"They're the ones who brought me here. What makes you think I'm any different?"

He lunged at her, and she gasped. He sniffed loudly at her neck, then stepped back.

"You smell different.""Different how?""You're well traveled. I know where you've been." He lunged and

sniffed again. "Oh no, that's new.""Please stop doing that."He frowned. "I thought you understood.""Understood what?""How much did they tell you about me?""Not much. That you claim to have traveled through time. They thought

I should hear the rest from you."A smirk crept up the corner of his mouth. "They're watching us right

now. It's funny they think I can't see them. I saw you when you were on the other side, and I could tell right away about you. Now they're looking at you as much as me – whom are they really interested in?"

"I don't think this is really about me."He shrugged. "Who knows? You claim to know less than any of us.""The way you touch and smell – and also occasionally taste – are you

picking up some kind of information that way?""They really didn't tell you anything. I can hear them whisper about

it in other rooms. Trading theories about extra-sensory perception. But it's not their time to understand it yet."

"And I smell different?""The nose doesn't lie. Only people do.""Why don't you start by telling me why you're here, or maybe you can

just transmit it to me telepathically.""Don't play stupid.""Who's playing? Can't you smell my ignorance, or has technology not

advanced quite that far where you're from? Dr. Summers, the person who brought me here, the person on the other side of the glass, said whatever you're here for is urgent, so if time is of the essence I would think you'd rather be direct."

"Direct got me put in here," he said. "And I don't know anything about you."

"That's not true. When I came in you were convinced I could help you. Something about my odor?"

"Why are you dwelling on that?""Where I'm from, we don't communicate by smelling. It takes some

getting used to.""Because you're a traveler, I thought you could help me. I thought

they'd brought you here to finally help me, that you were running this place. But now I see you're just another pawn. You're no traveler. A stowaway at best, or some hapless idiot who stumbled into a wake. What good are you to me?"

"Maybe you're right. Worst case scenario: I'm useless, we're doomed, and only you know why. But there's a good chance I'm the best you're going to get, so why don't we try it my way?"

"Your way?""Talk, with words.""What is your name?""Cameron Matthews.""A doctor like the others?""Yes."He looked at the glass, then back at her and shrugged. "Maybe you're

not a complete imbecile."

"I'll put that on my resume."He sat cross-legged on the floor. "I am Sedric Thames. What you know

as ASTA becomes something quite different in the future, and I work for them two hundred years from now as a kind of police."

"If you're police, then something must need policing.""Time travel, like anything else, can be used for good or ill. But

it's so much more dangerous than that. Making even the slightest change to past events can catastrophically alter the time line."

"You mean the butterfly effect?""More sensitive than the butterfly effect could even begin to suggest.

If you wish to bring about a certain change, it's not as simple as just taking an action."

"So killing Hitler is out.""No one dares touch the big events. There are certain epochal dividing

lines that are inviolable. Changing them is like setting off a nuclear bomb in history. No one knows what would happen to the future – er, present – well, my present." Sedric stood up again and paced, gesturing in big sweeping movements with his arms. "We study those effects, examine for change, try to stop those who wish to alter the past. And half the battle is just understanding where and when and how. We're historians. We need to be, because time travel is like microsurgery, and you need to understand its biology inside and out before you make an incision."

"So a minute change is all it takes to alter the course of history.""Yes.""The slightest deviation.""Yes!""And you came to warn us by crashing into a highly guarded facility

days before an international event?""I wasn't supposed to land inside Cobalt Pierre. My calculations were

askew. I … missed.""You missed? You just told me time travel is microsurgery. So you were

aiming for the heart and hit the foot?""It would be more accurate to say I was aiming for the aorta and hit

the vena cava.""But the patient is still dead! How do you know you haven't already

caused irreparable damage to your time line?""I know. I just know."

"Then what did you come here to stop?" she asked. "Or start?""The Summit – this year's Summit is more important than any before or

any after. And someone is coming to destroy it. I can't tell you everything. I can't risk giving you more knowledge than you're meant to have."

"Well, how do we stop it? Can you tell us that? Like you said: where and when and how."

3: Unintended Consequences

"How would you have done it?" asked a man seated two tables down from Matthews in the facility's cafeteria, which she discovered really was serving fish today, in a creamy lime butter sauce; as far as dehydrated food went, it wasn't half bad. They were the only two in the cafeteria, but it still took her a moment to realize he was talking to her.

"Excuse me?""How would you have done it?""Done what?""Gone back in time to change the past?" He picked up his tray – he'd

skipped the fish and gone straight for the doughnuts – and sat down right across from her. He tapped the name badge on his chest. "I'm Pecke Gannon, associate researcher in the temporal division."

"Pake, did you say?""Yeah, rhymes with 'bake.' Family name. You wouldn't believe how many

times I was called 'Peck' or 'Pecky' growing up. At a certain point you just stop correcting people."

"Is that what you'd do? Go back and change what your parents named you?"

"Oh no," he said, taking her comment more seriously than she meant him to. "Trying to influence your own life events is a theoretical minefield. Sure, I could end up as John or George or Richard, but I could also end up a high school dropout slinging Product V on street corners. No thank you."

"So what would you change?""Do you know the Homeowners Tax Amnesty Act of 2114?""Assume I don't.""You really should. It's hard to wrap your head around, but that

boring money stuff affects everything we do. Twenty-five years ago there was sweeping federal tax reform, and deep in that bill Senator Georgina Huff from New Texas attached a rider allocating funds to science research and technology. What I'd do is find a way to make them increase the annual currency value readjustment from five-percent to eight-point-five percent. Sounds small, but over the quarter century it would pay off big enough to for us to afford the Kedron Particle Extractor I've been lobbying for for fifteen months."

"So you'd still change something for you."

He shrugged. "May as well. You'd do something for someone else, then?""No, I think I'd find a way to eliminate the biology prerequisite at

Emery SciTech Institute. I was on a physics concentration -- why do I need to know about mollusks?"

"Staunchly opposed to mollusks then. Duly noted.""Then again, eliminate the prerequisite and maybe you don't reach that

undeclared would-be scientist who has an affinity for organic life. He never gets to study human physiology, some disease doesn't get cured when it's supposed to, and then that disease kills someone else we don't know about, the architect of world peace maybe, or another Hitler. So now I've either saved the world or ended it, all because I didn't want to learn about mollusks. That's the thing: how do you make even the slightest change without unintended consequences?"

"So you think our uninvited guest is lying?""I'm leaning that way.""We thought the same thing.""The temporal researchers did?""And Dr. Summers," said Pecke. "Not gonna lie, I'll be a little

disappointed if he's just bullshitting us.""Maybe not about everything."It wasn't lost on Matthews when Thames suggested she was being watched

as closely as he was. And she hadn't told Dr. Summers everything she suspected about the traveler. Maybe she was making too much of his metaphor of time travel as microsurgery, but how often do you find a surgeon who works alone? She wondered if there was at least one other pair of invisible hands at work -- somewhere.

If Dr. Summers believed the same, it was smart to suspect Matthews, smart to bring her to the black site, and smart to see how she and the mysterious visitor reacted to each other. And now this Dr. Gannon was asking her how she would change history. Maybe he really was just curious, but she monitored what she said and how she said it just in case.

Whatever they believed, they were taking additional precautions at Cobalt Pierre -- some of the suggestions Thames had made that they would have done anyway, though they didn't move their entire security team to the east quadrant like he suggested because they weren't about to take his word for it. They probably did even more they didn't even tell Matthews about.

She finished her dehydrated fish and left the cafeteria. Dr. Gannon

didn't follow.She had planned to wander the facility, see exactly what research was

being conducted by ASTA's top minds – partly out of curiosity, and partly to test the limits of her freedom, find out what they'd let her see before yanking her chain. She found, to her surprise, an unmarked lab with technology she recognized. In the center was a large vacuum chamber connected to a console, which she identified immediately. It was an Auerbach, named after its inventor, and it could generate an untold number of atmospheric conditions; an article and photo spread appeared in a tech journal Cameron had read twice – for fun. But as far as she knew the prototype had just been developed, and none were expected on the market for another year. Yet here it was. And inside it hung a stable, sinuous vapor, like cirrus clouds but tinted blue. She stood staring at it so long she didn't even notice the researchers looking at her curiously, like she was a child who'd stumbled into, well, an advanced meteorologic lab.

"What is this?" she asked."It's an Auerbach. It generates –""Obviously I know what it is. What are you doing with it?""We're, um, …" The three scientists surrounding the vacuum chamber

shared looks, silently conferring with each other."I'm an atmospheric physicist in a black site looking at an Auerbach.

If you're worried about divulging classified information, the ship has sailed."

"We're testing the effects of Tempus X on weather systems." This researcher seemed young, not even thirty. He fidgeted with his shirt collar under his lab coat.

"I know you can identify Tempus X, but you can generate it too?"He shrugged and hunched his shoulders. "We can approximate it.""It's like radio waves, right? And this is a terrestrial weather

system – what have you found?""It looks like a blind alley," said an older female researcher."We're trying to develop a predictive model." The young man said it

almost like an apology.Matthews was fixated on the bluish cloud. "I'd be happy to help as

long as I'm here. Put an Auerbach in front of me and I'll follow any alleys you like. I'd kill for one of these. I'm working on the Mars Project –"

"We know," said the older woman.

"Of course," said Matthews. "I forget that I'm famous around here. You've probably all studied 143, maybe know my service record better than I do. Well, that means you know I'm good at my job. If you really can't use me, I'll get out of your way, but I doubt that's true."

They agreed, and it was a good thing they did. She had hours of argument left in her, and that energy could be put to better use. She cracked her knuckles and got to work, taking mental notes for the adamant request she'd submit for one at the Mars Station as soon as they let her leave … eventually. Between her anxiety and the Auerbach tests, she didn't notice Dr. Summers enter behind her until she announced herself.

"Dr. Matthews, you're wanted on a video conference call.""With who?""Jaeson Harris and Patricia Osborn from the Mars Station.""I don't understand, how do they even know I'm here?""They don't. But they've been looking for you almost since you left,

sending requests through ASTA. We think it would be better if you speak to them. It should go without saying that you mustn't reveal anything about where you are or why you're here."

"And if I did?" said Matthews. She was half-joking, but Summers wasn't.

"Then your career would be over.""You'd make sure of that?""I wouldn't even be part of it. It's just what happens."

The last Matthews heard, Harris had gone on leave for three weeks. They must have brought him back in as soon as she was called away. Summers brought her to a small, nondescript conference room where Harris and Osborn were together on a video monitor on the wall. Summers remained outside, and closed the door after Matthews entered.

"This is more cloak-and-dagger than I'm used to, Cam," said Harris. "They set us up on a secure channel and told us you would be 'made temporarily available.' Should we be worried? Are they shutting us down?"

"Nothing like that." Harris had projects go south before, so he reacted to even the slightest change as if it were an omen. He thought they were being shut down when the toilets stopped working one day. "There isn't much I can tell you. Suffice it to say it's an unrelated matter."

"Level with me, are you CIA? You can tell me if you are. I won't think

any less of you as a scientist, only as a person.""If I told you that, I'd have to kill you.""Davidson screwed up," Osborn interjected. "Not good Davidson, dumb

Davidson.""I asked you not to call him that anymore," said Harris."I thought you just meant not to his face.""You've been calling him that to his face?""I thought we all were, and it's not like 'Other Davidson' is much

better.""You could call him James," said Matthews. "It's useful, because it's

his name.""But you knew who I meant when I said dumb Davidson.""What did he screw up?""The mineral spectrum analysis.""He contaminated it again?""Afraid so.""And that sets us back how long exactly?""Two weeks, at least.""Honestly, I wonder why we let anyone else touch the equipment. Just

the three of us could get it done much faster -- provided our bodies stop needing food and sleep. We'd be done in a year."

"Patty and I are considering instituting a two-doctorates rule before anyone even steps on-board," said Harris.

"Any asshole can earn one doctorate," said Osborn. "That doesn't show competency or dedication."

"Tell that to my thesis on climate systems on nitrogen-poor exoplanets," said Matthews. "How did Bonnie take the news that your leave got cut to nonexistent?"

"She's fine with it," said Harris. "We're trying to get pregnant, but she told me she'd just postpone ovulating this month. I'm playing dumb, pretending not to notice the sarcasm."

"In the future you should feel free to not update me on the specifics of your wife's reproductive cycle."

"But then what would we talk about?"Matthews ignored him and turned back to Patricia. "How's your better

half?""Paul is also fine – not ovulating," said Patricia.

"I should hope not, or else I know what my third doctoral thesis would be on."

"Wherever you are right now, I envy you," said Harris.Matthews laughed in a sudden burst. "Maybe someday I'll explain to you

how dumb that is to say … unless whoever is listening to this thinks I shouldn't, in which case I won't."

Harris and Osborn suddenly disappeared and were replaced by a blank blue screen. When the lights dimmed momentarily, Matthews assumed it was some kind of power surge. She didn't realize it was an emergency alert until Dr. Summers charged through the door.

"Come with me," she said."Where?""To safety. There's been an explosion at Cobalt Pierre."

4: Protocol

Safety felt a little like a jail cell. Matthews was brought to a room not unlike Mr. Thames's – except with chairs – but like Thames she didn't use them; it had been 20 minutes without a word since they locked her inside – for safety – so she paced her way through worst-case scenarios. An explosion at Cobalt Pierre – that's all she knew. Big enough to take out a room? A wing? The entire facility? She still knew people who worked there.

The door opened again, this time on a familiar face."Frank?" she said. "Jesus Christ, Frank, thank God you're okay. They

told me –""About the explosion. They told me too. That's goddamn all they told

me. Jenkins and I have been holed up in here for hours answering questions, and then all of a sudden –"

"Jenkins?""New guy I'm supervising. He's actually the one who picked up the

intruder on the security feed.""Good find for the new guy.""Yeah, well, a giant smoking hole in the perimeter wall is hard to

miss when you have a camera pointed at it. And right about now he's probably wishing he hadn't seen anything, because he doesn't know where the hell he is or what's going on, and neither do I."

"For all we know, it's lucky you're both here. For all we know at Cobalt Pierre …"

She stopped when Francis became clearly overwhelmed. She pulled a chair out from the brushed steel table in the center of the room, and he just about collapsed into it.

"We saw the intruder," said Francis, "not just on the feed, but right there in the room with us. Came right into the security office and told us everyone was going to die, and now …" He swallowed hard on the words. "Did you know Diana Andon? She used to work the perimeter and now she's on interior security, and she's still in there somewhere. God only knows …"

Matthews didn't know Andon. It was rare for researchers to fraternize with security personnel at the facility – there's no story there. She didn't hang out with security for the same reason she didn't hang out with accountants or acupuncturists: she just didn't meet many in her line of work. But Francis was the first person she ever met at Cobalt Pierre. He

was filling in doing arrivals processing on the day of her orientation, asking basic questions like her name, her date of birth, and her CID – her clearance identification number – and she imprinted on him like a duckling.

That might be a slight exaggeration. They never had very much to talk about, but he was always a familiar face – her first familiar face – and thus always a welcome sight even after she had made other friends. They had lunch sometimes when their schedules lined up, but she hadn't spoken to him since she left for the Mars Project. These days she hardly spoke to anyone who wasn't involved in the Mars Project.

Then Francis composed himself and said, "I think you should tell me about 143."

The diagnostic capsule only accommodated one passenger. Whoever designed it must not have considered the tedium of actually running diagnostic tests. And there wasn't even the benefit of much science. The system mostly ran itself, except for the piloting and the kinds of finicky monitoring you'd probably be able to do remotely in a few years, somewhere on the surface, in a comfortable room with other people in it, on a couch maybe, in your pajamas with hot cocoa.

There was the satisfaction of data of course -- sweet, sweet data -- though little of it was of any new significance. Every once in a while, distortions in the moon's artificial atmosphere required the attention of the atmospherics team, and a few minor re-calibrations would be made to ensure the colonists didn't all choke and die in the vacuum of space, but that was less science than tech support, and Matthews could have thought of a hundred better ways to spend those hours, and another hundred better ways to study the atmosphere. She could have thought of both hundred and had time to name, number, and catalog them in the time she spent alone in that capsule.

"Energy spike at 15:53 in sector 18C. Adjusting point-nine-seven degrees to compensate," said Matthews aloud, recording to the official log. "Energy signature normalizing. Proceeding to sector 18D."

She had to crane her neck a little to see out the capsule window above the computer console in front of her, and as the craft traveled the thousand meters to sector 18D, her only perception of movement was seeing the arch of the moon's surface turn twenty kilometers below. It only took a few seconds to reach the next sector. She began the automated diagnostics

and sighed."Commencing diagnostic scan of sector 18D at 15:55. Enabling ionic

stabilizers and --"There was a flash of bluish white across the window -- an instant, but

just long enough for her to notice. She stood up from her seat -- stood as far as the space would allow, the back of her neck pressed against the bulkhead as she hunched forward for a better look through the window. She saw stars, but no moon. No Earth either. Maybe she got turned around en route.

She activated the computer's command input and said, "Confirm capsule location."

No result."Confirm capsule location relative to lunar surface. Are we in sector

18D?"No result."The moon is still there, right?" she said. She wasn't anticipating a

response, but the computer answered, "Cannot determine location based on lunar surface triangulation. Lunar surface not detected."

She didn't see that coming."Establish short-wave communications link with Cobalt Pierre.""Unable to establish short-wave communications link. Cobalt Pierre is

out of communications range.""Then open a long-distance emergency channel to --""Unable to open emergency channel. All receivers are out of

communications range.""So where in the hell am I exactly?"No result.Cameron froze for a moment, staring unblinking through the window as

if an answer might flash in front of her there at any moment."Computer," she began, "send out a generalized distress signal on all

channels.""Specify duration of generalized distress --""Until I tell you not to."Don't panic. Technical hiccup. Even if the capsule couldn't see, hear,

or speak to the surface, they'd still be able to see and hear her. They'd pick up her distress signal and send help. And when she got back she would have a really good reason to request -- no, demand -- never to be sent up

in a goddamn diagnostic capsule ever again."Computer, confirm status of emergency supplies," she said. They were

full up on rations. Worst case scenario, she'd survive until someone --One little lambent green light appeared on the console, flashing in

slow pulses and seeming not to take the situation as seriously as it should have been.

It was an incoming message."Hello," said Cameron, definitely not panicking. "Hello?"There was silence on the other end for a moment, and then a woman's

voice said, "Yes, hello, sorry, my fault, sorry -- who is this?""Dr. Cameron Matthews of the Allied Science and Technology

Administration. Is this Cobalt Pierre?""Never heard of him.""No, Cobalt Pierre, it's a ... never mind. Who am I speaking to?""I'm afraid that's a long story, but trust me, you have time."

"143 doesn't matter," said Cameron."Doesn't it?" said Francis."No, And there's nothing to say about it that everyone doesn't already

know.""Actually, there are some gaps in my understanding. Something about a

disappearing shuttle and you going crazy and being sent to Mars.""It was a diagnostic capsule. I wish it had been a shuttle. Those have

leg room.""I don't care if it was a rickshaw. All I know is you disappeared,

came back, and I never heard from you again, just people spreading rumors about you being abducted by aliens, or traveling through time, or that you were secretly recruited for some kind of covert ops. All of a sudden there's a crisis at the facility and here you are again. What is this, CIA? Something to do with the protests? An experimental weapons test gone wrong? Am I about to be disappeared?"

"No, Frank, you're not going to be disappeared," said Cameron. She hesitated before she continued.

"You can trust me," he said."It was the second one -- the second rumor you mentioned, time travel.

That's what happened, and it's what might be happening now."Francis tilted his head and frowned. "Really!? That was the dumbest

one!"

"Do you trust me?" asked the woman who found Cameron out in the ... wherever she was. She was able to dock with her rescuer even though Cameron wasn't familiar with this particular model of craft.

"I just met you. How could I trust you?""Good answer," she said. "Unfortunately, you don't have a choice. I'm

the only one here, so there's no one else who can help you, but if you had a choice, the right choice would be to not trust me. Remember that."

The strange woman introduced herself as Brillian, but that was all she said about herself. Nothing about who she worked for, where she came from, or the craft she was operating -- Cameron didn't even know if Brillian was her first name or last, or if she was just went by one name like a pop star. They met on the sealed docking bridge that connected their vessels, and Brillian seemed hesitant to let her further.

"Listen," said Brillian, looking back and forth between Cameron and her ship behind her. "I was passing through and caught you in my wake. I can return you soon to where I picked you up from, but first I must tell you something, and depending on exactly what point I pulled you from, you may find it difficult to comprehend, but don't worry, there are protocols! Protocols through which we may avoid drastic neural intervention, and that is very good news."

Cameron asked her to explain drastic neural intervention, but she didn't, and Cameron wondered if she even really even wanted to know.

"Your first instinct may be to react incredulously. This is a product of a properly functioning mind, and you should follow that instinct every other time you hear such a thing as I'm about to tell you, but as I said earlier, this is the one and only exception, so push past your inevitable disbelief even if you don't take my word for it, and please allow me to provide evidence so that you may verify my claims according to the very precise protocol by which we may avoid drastic neural intervention. I'm asking politely for your cooperation because that's part of the protocol, but again, you do not have a choice, you have traveled through time.

"… After considerable build-up to prepare you for that information, I realize now I delivered it quite abruptly, so I'll repeat it to make sure you apprehended --"

"I heard you correctly. I traveled through time?"

"Please, I must repeat it, and you must remain silent as I do so, as protocol dictates." She paused for what seemed like a specifically timed interval. "You have traveled through time."

Cameron didn't respond."This is the part where you're supposed to say something. I've trained

for various expressions of panic, including but not limited to the uncontrolled flailing of limbs," said Brillian.

"I'm pushing beyond the disbelief like you suggested, and now I'm waiting for the evidence that proves what you told me isn't the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard ... not to be incredulous."

Brillian raised an eyebrow. "This is going unusually well -- or unusually badly, it's hard to say. I'll proceed as though it's going unusually well. The next stage of the protocol requires you to follow me and keep your eyes tightly shut until I say otherwise."

Cameron did just that and was pulled by the hand through Brillian's ship. She could only make out certain sounds, faint whirs and digital tones, then all of a sudden a right turn, a soft pulsing note and then a right, a hiss. Nothing about them to suggest future technology -- and of course she would know, having seen "Red Dust Frontier" eleven times.

"Open them," said Brillian. She opened her eyes, but there wasn't much to see. They were in a compartment not much bigger than Cameron's diagnostic capsule, but almost entirely dark save the light from a monitor in the wall. There was nowhere to sit, and barely room for both of them to stand.

"Please watch this," said Brillian. "I'll be back soon." She left before Cameron could say anything else, and when the door hissed open and closed the momentary flood of light from outside jolted her like a flash grenade. She rubbed the spots out of her eyes before the video began, showing a grey cartoon cat in a bright green field under a blue sky. The color palate was basic, and the detail in the artwork was even more so.

"If you are watching this, you have mistakenly traveled through time," said the cat in a soothing but practiced-sounding voice of indeterminate gender. "What you are seeing is the rough approximation of an animal likely to be common to your native time period, because the human limbic response to felines in the early stages of development has proven beneficial in the successful execution of the protocol, by which we may avoid drastic neural intervention."

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part," said Cameron to herself, but the kitten unexpectedly replied, "Please do not interrupt this educational presentation." Its eyes grew absurdly large and it purred softly, maybe to activate Cameron's limbic response, but she was more of a dog person.

"Unintended time travel is uncommon but not unheard of," the kitten explained. "To ensure your safe return and to safeguard the timeline, you will be carefully isolated from events and technology that may dangerously influence your native time period. But to ease your undoubtedly escalating and hysterical panic and thus ensure your cooperation, we will provide you with carefully selected information that will demonstrate that you indeed have been temporally displaced, and we're very sorry about that, though this apology should not be interpreted as an admission of criminal, civil, moral, philosophical or theoretical liability."

A roughly drawn round pink object rolled into the frame, and the kitten batted it between its paws. Cameron interpreted it as a ball of yarn.

"This concludes your introduction. After this video terminates, please use the touchscreen to review the documents that will become necessary for the next two weeks as we prepare your return to your native time period."

"Two weeks?"That time, Cameron wished the kitten would've responded to her, but it

didn't. It scurried out of the frame, and the ball of yarn became a button that read, "Touch to review relevant data." She did, but even while she read the heavily redacted documentation, the idea of spending fourteen days in this strange place hadn't fully sunken in. This may just have been some misunderstanding or hoax or dream that she didn't understand yet, but it wouldn't become clear to her anytime soon.

"That's the whole story?" said Francis."Yes, that's the whole story," Cameron insisted."All this because you spent a couple of hours in some kind of

isolation room at an unspecified point in the future?""Just a couple of hours," she repeated. "That's all it was."

5: Unknown Unknown

Lauren Summers was a scientist, not a cop, so she was out of her element after the infiltration of Cobalt Pierre. But she handled it the way she handled everything: one step at a time. After her contact at Cobalt alerted her to the breach, first thing's first: she had a half dozen observation rooms secured to hold and isolate the intruder and any relevant witnesses.

Then she sent a covert field team to gather data from the site; they pretended to be regular ASTA security doing a routine sweep, which technically wasn't a lie because they were doing that too.

Next, she convened a meeting of her senior researchers to dump cold water on their enthusiasm; their imaginations ran away with them on wild theories, mostly wishful thinking; concrete data was so rare they reacted to any new information like it was the Holy Grail. Surely this will be the key to everything! The scientist in Summers was just as excited as they were, but the cop needed to be rational.

It helped that these procedures weren't exactly her own. They were put in place before Summers was even born, by John Cave, ASTA's director of theoretical sci-tech almost seventy years ago. He established the black site, and Warren Hyde, Lauren's grandfather, was the first to run it. Together, they invented the policies that dictated her day-to-day work.

Hyde retired from the post several years before Lauren had even earned her doctorate, but she knew he had to have been the one to recommend her for the position when it became available.

She resisted at first. "I don't want the job just because I'm your granddaughter," she had told him.

"Are you qualified?" he'd asked."Yes.""Then who cares what your connections are? Never -- and I mean never

-- turn down an opportunity."So she didn't. If anyone resented her for it, they never said so to

her face, and if they resented her behind her back, she never picked up on it; sometimes she was glad she lacked the skill to read other people. That was another lesson from her grandfather: "If you're doing your job well, someone will dislike you. Knowing who or why never helps."

When she'd asked him how many people disliked him, he just smiled. "If

they'd mattered I'd remember."But she'd have to take a different approach with the Cobalt Pierre

intruder. She needed to understand him, judge his credibility – his sanity even. She'd done it before. It was easy to debunk most supposed time travelers' stories at a glance. Usually they wanted attention, or were mentally ill. Didn't take a cop to figure those out.

But then, most supposed time travelers didn't come to her attention by bursting through the wall of a secure lunar facility.

"What do you know about it anyway?" said the traveler, Mr. Thames. That was in response to her saying "Hello," and it was about as much as she would get out of him. "And get rid of these. I don't need them," he said about the table and chairs in the middle of the room, as if they disgusted him somehow. "And send in whoever's in charge."

"I'm in charge of this facility, Mr. Thames.""Then God help us all," he said with a condescending little laugh.

Summers noticed his strange amalgam of accents (though his English was fluent) and his disheveled hair and multicolored clothing. She wondered if most of those were affectations meant to distract her, just like his performance about the table and chairs. When he lurched suddenly and gave her a sniff, she was unmoved.

"Come back to me when you have someone serious," he sneered.She could have said the same to him. He seemed too deliberate to be

crazy. Perhaps he was a skilled con artist, or an extremist protesting the Summit. A performance artist maybe? She had all but written him off, but then the test results came back positive for Tempus X.

"He's really a time traveler," said Dr. Gannon. He was practically jumping out of his skin when he presented the findings to Summers.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she said."Man crashes on the moon from out of nowhere, and all our readings

point to a significant temporal event at the crash site and on his person. What else could it be?"

"Could be an unknown unknown. You know better than to conclude anything based on one data point. Besides," she added, "I'm not ready to accept that we'll be dressing that way in the future. We could open up a new field of research on those blue pants alone."

"They look more gold to me."The witnesses couldn't explain much more than Mr. Thames did. They

spoke to the entire security team at the scene and brought two back to the black site for further questioning: team leader Francis Anderson and Officer Wesley Jenkins. Nothing suspicious in either of their service records or testimonies. Jenkins seemed a bit twitchy, but some people are like that after a strange man breaks into your facility and foretells your doom.

The subject of 143 came up early. The senior researchers wondered if the incidents were connected, and of course Summers wondered the same thing. The 143 incident was the only other confirmed temporal event on Terra Luna, and Dr. Cameron Matthews worked at Cobalt Pierre. If they weren't connected somehow, it was a hell of a coincidence. But "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," she told them. Time to cross.

Bringing Dr. Matthews in could be a risk – a known unknown. Giving her access to a secret ASTA facility without knowing what she might know or not know, or what her connection to this may or may not be – was that a risk worth taking? And it wasn't the cop in her who thought so but the scientist: you don't run an experiment if you can't control the variables, and this scenario had variables within variables, but did she have a choice?

Two hours. She would give herself two hours to find another workable option and then she'd make the call.

"Dr. Gannon," she said as he walked past her office door. "Can you forward me everything we have on Cameron Matthews? The 143 incident report, service record, health records – hell, old report cards if we have them."

"Way ahead of you," said Gannon with a knowing smirk. "I thought you might want it, so I sent it to you about 45 minutes ago."

"If her report cards are actually in there, I'll be impressed.""If you give me another half hour or so, I might be able to –""Legally?""Never mind then."Summers read the 143 report first, for what must have been the

thirtieth time – maybe more. As hard as she squinted at it, it didn't tell her anything new. Dr. Matthew was two hours and fourteen minutes out of audio-visual contact. Her diagnostic capsule was thoroughly inspected and showed no signs of damage or malfunction except for minor radio interference Summers's team recognized as Tempus X. There were actually fifteen pages on how there was nothing wrong with the capsule – she wanted

to be thorough, but maybe not fifteen-pages-on-an-inconclusive-inspection thorough. She read every word of it anyway before moving on to Dr. Matthews herself.

Her official debriefing had been, well, brief. The transcript was barely two pages long, but she had told them about her encounter with an unknown vessel and that she believed she had traveled through time. They asked her again after connecting her to respiratory and circulatory monitors, which showed that she was telling the truth, or at least that she believed she was, so they ordered a series of physical and psychological examinations over the next several days. Those were also inconclusive: no neurological abnormalities, no indications at all that she was mentally impaired – except for her claim that she had traveled through time.

Occam's razor: Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Knowing their data to be sound, the likeliest problem was human error in interpreting that data. And the two data points most prone to faulty interpretation: the lie detector, which was an unreliable investigative tool, and the psychological analysis.

Simplest explanation: She was lying or she was crazy, and they missed it.

But before Dr. Matthews could be discharged, Summers and her team confirmed residual traces of Tempus X in the capsule and secretly intervened on her behalf, changing Matthews's personnel status to "High Priority." Ironically, Matthews didn't have high enough clearance to know that, so she had no way to know why she got to keep her job at all, or why she was transferred to the Mars Project shortly thereafter.

Summers even had an operative posted to the Mars Project to monitor her, but James Davidson had reported nothing spectacular about her behavior. But Davidson might not really know either. He was like Summers – a scientist, not a cop.

Beyond that there were no discrepancies in Dr. Matthews's record or background. If there had been she never would have passed her initial ASTA background check, and that was rigorous enough – Summers had been through it herself. So right about now Summers really did wish she had those old report cards. Anything for one more data point.

She checked the time. She'd been reviewing the files for two hours, six minutes, but deep down she knew the answer she'd get to from the moment she sat down. She alerted Dr. Gannon: "Let's bring her in."

6: Razor

Explosion at Cobalt Pierre. Dr. Summers wondered if she had failed, if the visitor's warnings had been true, if she had wasted too much time. First things first, assess the damage.

"The blast was in the southeast perimeter," said Gannon."Isn't that where our intruder breached?""Not quite. But ... that's still east quadrant, Dr. Summers, where he

wanted us to concentrate our security."Summers took a deep breath. They had bet he was wrong, or lying. That

was a mistake – maybe a deadly one. "How many people were hurt?""Unclear at this point," said Gannon."How can it be unclear? How big was the blast?""Judging from aerial imaging, the blast radius was three to five

meters.”That took her by surprise. “That's it?” Given the size of the

facility, that struck her as downright insignificant, unless it was targeting something specific – or someone. Who had died? What critical systems had been compromised?

“There was slight damage to an empty conference room,” a security officer told her during a video call. He was the head of the same field team she'd sent after the intruder crash-landed.

“Was anybody hurt?”“Not at all.”“What about infrastructure? Anything that would affect the Summit?”“I mean, not unless they were planning to use that conference room. Of

course they could always use a different one – there are many conference rooms."

Now Summers couldn't tell if she was over-thinking or under-thinking this. It could be a diversion, or the first in a string of successive strikes each more devastating than the last. It was imperative that they find the person who –

"Oh, they already found him.""They found him?" said Summers."He caught some shrapnel in the leg. The bomb went off a short

distance from an infirmary in the facility so they've been talking to him there."

"Have you had any access to that interrogation? Do they know who this guy is or what he wanted?"

"He's a Luna Libre protester, acted alone, the bomb was homemade and made pretty poorly at that. He miscalculated the time fuse, hence the shrapnel."

"Are you sure he was working alone? If he made a bomb at home, even a bad one, where did he get the materials for it?"

"We're still trying to ascertain that, Dr. Summers, but as you know there are literally hundreds of eyes on that perimeter, and they're not seeing anything suspicious."

"Well they didn't see anything suspicious while a protester managed to set off a bomb under their noses either."

"There has been a lot of commotion since the intruder crashed into the facility. You've been interviewing some officers from the southeast security team there at the black site, and nobody here knows that except me and my guys, so there's a lot of confusion –"

"Are you saying this is my fault?" She hoped not."No, Dr. Summers. I understand the protocols – they just maybe worked

against us this time."Diversion, Summers thought again. Maybe this bombing wasn't the

diversion at all. Maybe the intruder was, but to what end? Was this some kind of epochal event that would ripple through the time line and she just couldn't see it?

She visited Thames again, but only to observe him through the two-way mirror. No one had told him about the explosion. No one had even entered that room since Dr. Matthews left it, but his demeanor seemed different somehow. He was sitting on the floor, calmly slouched with his back against the wall, eyes drifting from one empty patch of ceiling to another. Occasionally he opened his mouth and seemed to … lick the air. What was she missing?

Occam's razor, she reminded herself. Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. She knew just about everything there was to know about Dr. Matthews and next to nothing about Mr. Thames, so Matthews was the better bet, just like she had been when Summers decided to bring her there in the first place. Trust wasn't science, but she was going to have to do it anyway.

Matthews wasn't surprised when Dr. Summers entered the interview room where she waited with Francis, but she was surprised when she said, "I'll show you everything we have on 143, even the stuff you don't know about – especially the stuff you don't know about." That intrigued Francis, though he wasn't given the same invitation.

"Why would you show it to me now?" Matthews asked."The explosion at Cobalt Pierre hardly did any damage," said Summers,

at which Francis let out an audible sigh. "That's good news of course, but it feels like there's a catch, and I trust you more than our friend Mr. Thames."

"So no one was hurt?" Francis asked."No a soul," said Summers."So that's the end of it?""That remains to be seen. But I'm sending you and Mr. Jenkins back to

Cobalt Pierre. We need as many eyes on the scene as we can get."On the way to Summers's office, she started to fill Matthews in on the

details of the classified 143 investigation, Tempus X, how it was detected and measured, and how it manifested in Matthews's case. Summers even admitted to being suspicions about Matthews.

"Two major time-travel events occurring around Cobalt Pierre – I wonder if they're connected too," said Matthews, "but I wish there were more I could tell you. My job is breathable atmosphere. Temporal physics is so far from my field of expertise it may as well be botany."

Then Matthews stopped in her tracks."Did you think of something?" said Summers. "Something about botany?"No, it was the Auerbach lab. They passed by its open door and Matthews

could see the scientists inside continuing to work, arms crossed, hands on hips, the rubbing of temples – not the body language of success.

"Don't worry," said Summers, "if the universe doesn't collapse, I'll make sure you get one for the Mars Project."

But that wasn't what caught Matthews's attention. When she had first seen the atmosphere they generated in the vacuum chamber, it shined blue, but now it fluctuated – wisps of red and green, light and color dipping in and out, not forming any clear, repeating patterns.

"We're not even sure how closely we're approximating Tempus X," said the young researcher from before.

"How long have you been running these tests?" Matthews asked.

"Almost two months.""On the same atmospheric model?""No, we cycle them. We're trying replicate Tempus X to observe any

patterns, but we've found nothing we can apply to any of our preexisting data. There's just nothing in it we recognize."

"What if I told you I do?"Everyone in the room perked up, not least of all Dr. Summers. "Where

do you recognize this from?"Dr. Matthews glanced around at the expectant faces in the room and

took a deep breath. "There's something I need to tell you."

7: Thirty-Seven Percent

By day thirteen on Brillian's ship, Matthews had read through the redacted documents at least 20 times. The first time was curiosity, the next few were frustration, and finally she hoped she might be able to teach it to herself somehow. In-between all the missing info were references to distant star systems she already knew about, mixed with data showing relative distances from the Sagittarius A* black hole. But it was like trying to solve a math problem without any numbers. Did this prove she was in the future?

Luckily she didn't spend the entire two weeks in that tiny room. She was allowed to walk down one corridor to the restroom when she needed it, and the restroom actually had a window -- a tiny port hole she could look through and see usually nothing -- tiny blinking stars in the distance, and streaks of light from blue to red as the ship traveled at what must have been tremendous speeds.

However, on that thirteenth day, on her second trip to relieve herself that morning -- relieve herself of boredom mostly -- she saw something else: a planet, or maybe a moon. It wasn't the Earth, but there were large expanses of blue interspersed with green land masses. Had they traveled light years to this place? Was there a human colony here -- or even an alien colony? If so, she would definitely start to believe in time travel, but Brillian only gave her details that left her with questions, not answers, and if the goal was to avoid drastic neural intervention -- Matthews very much did want to avoid that, whatever it was -- seeding her imagination with more mysteries probably defeated the purpose.

Just looking at this globe she was curious about its size, its elemental composition, its population -- goodness, that it could even have a population! -- and she wondered about its atmosphere too, especially after seeing lights in its sky similar to the ones she'd first noticed around the port hole. It looked almost like the Aurora Borealis, but these weren't concentrated at the polls. They were scattered across the sky like translucent storms, pulsing in and out like no phenomenon she had ever seen before.

She felt like she was catching a glimpse of something secret, eavesdropping on a dangerous conversation. She half expected someone to barge in behind her to say, "You've seen too much," and then disappear her.

But she couldn't tear herself away. She had been in the bathroom for well over twenty minutes now, far more than it would take any reasonable person to pee, even someone unfamiliar with this vessel's color-coded geometric flushing system -- on her first visit it only took her about ten.

But still she lingered. She wanted to map the planet in her mind, name its continents -- oh they probably already had names, but she'd make up new ones. She finally turned to leave, but that was when she saw Brillian standing there, arms crossed, tapping her foot, an inscrutable frown on her face. How long had she been standing there?

"This is my fault more than it is yours," she said, "though your share of blame is roughly thirty-seven percent and that's plenty. Protocol is clear on that."

"There's protocol for allocating blame?""How else would you know? I suppose you probably have judges and

juries in your time, or do you still live under the feudal system? Are you familiar with Hammurabi's code?"

"Not in the sense of living under it," said Matthews."Never mind. Follow me please."Brillian led Matthews out of the bathroom and in the opposite

direction from the small room she had been sequestered in."Where are we going?" Matthews asked.Brillian didn't answer. She also didn't blindfold Matthews, or ask her

to avert her gaze, which in itself was worrying given the strict precautions they'd taken when she boarded he ship. Instead, Brillian was much freer with information, and Matthews was afraid she knew what that meant.

"We're in orbit around the planet Hadrius 4, in a star system 428 light-years from Earth. This is where we'll send you home." Brillian stopped in front of a closed door. "And that would be the end of it were it not for your unauthorized observation of the planet, of which you are thirty-seven percent culpable, which is seven percent above the threshold requiring drastic neural intervention."

"Is this where it happens?" Matthews asked."I'm glad you asked – yes it is quite painful, but it only lasts

three, maybe four hours, after which you won't remember you were ever in pain at all. But there may be other slight neurological side effects: you might forget a birthday or two, a few names and dates, how to perform basic

motor functions, and what smells are, but you should otherwise be unaffected. From what I've read, smelling had little if any significance under feudal law anyway."

"I assure you, smelling and motor functions are both highly valued where I come from – when I come from, which again is not the feudal period, and even if it were I'm not sure your research checks out with regard to smells and the importance thereof."

But Brillian didn't appear to be listening to Matthews. She seemed lost in thought – actually, she looked that way ever since Matthews was brought on board this vessel, but that faraway look took on an entirely different character when contemplating what Matthews could only imagine would happen behind that door.

"It's possible there is another way," said Brillian, talking to herself mostly; she acknowledged Matthews's presence only in passing, when her eyes happened to sweep across the hallway and notice her there like one would notice a house plant. "You do belong to ASTA, whose hiring policies at the time were stricter than most fiefs, which suggests a baseline trustworthiness proportional to most janitors and sex laborers of today. And I've come to like you. You have that face and the thing you do with your legs back and forth when you walk."

"You mean walking?""That's it!""You can trust me," said Matthews. "I won't discuss anything I've seen

here. I understand what's at stake.""Do you?""Well, no, but I understand that I don't understand, and that's good

enough for me. I just want to go home.""Then you shall. Just this once, we'll forgo drastic neural

intervention. This is a great responsibility I'm entrusting you with, though if we detect that you've caused any unauthorized alterations to the time line, we can simply go back a little further and prevent you from ever being born – it's win-win." Brillian smiled when she said this.

"You mustn't reveal anything about your time here. Nothing about this ship or this planet or even how long you've been here. You saw nothing and know nothing, which is quite close to the truth anyhow, so it's barely even a lie, but your continued existence is dependent on it, so try to be convincing."

Still smiling."This is so exciting!" Brillian continued. "I've never sent anyone

back to their era of origin without drastic neural intervention before since they all manage to see Hadrius 4 through the bathroom window – which come to think of it might be slightly more than sixty-three-percent my fault – maybe as much as sixty-eight percent. I'll have to modify the protocol to account for this."

Brillian led Matthews away without ever so much as opening the door, which suited Matthews just fine. She figured that seeing the instruments of drastic neural intervention would in itself be grounds for drastic neural intervention, after which Matthews would lose the cognitive ability to appreciate the irony.

That was the last thing Matthews saw of the future. When she first arrived wherever and whenever she was, Brillian trusted her to keep her own eyes shut, but this time she fitted her with an electronic blindfold, which was really just a VR headset running the same kitten program as the introductory video.

"If you're watching this, then you didn't mind your goddamn business did you?" it said in that soothing, ambiguously gendered voice. "As a result, you are now en route to drastic neural intervention, or to be interred in one of our many highly rated prison facilities, and it serves you right." There was a pause in the program, after which the kitten appeared annoyed. "It appears that you are being returned to your era of origin without drastic neural intervention, so now I will now provide a brief overview of the methods by which you will be made to no longer exist should an unauthorized alteration of the time line be traced to you. The procedure is entirely painless, as you will never have been alive to experience the sensation of pain …"

Matthews and Dr. Summers had both been standing in Summers's office when Matthews went into detail about her two weeks in the future, but Summers had to sit down midway through.

"What do you think?" Matthews asked."About which part?""Well, all of it.""I believe you because, well, who would lie about the cat? … So, the

patterns in the Auerbach were the same patterns you saw in the atmosphere

of Hadrius 4?""Similar enough. Maybe they're onto something in the lab and they

don't realize it. Maybe we could use that to identify where – or when – Thames really comes from."

"I think we should apply it to you first," said Summers unexpectedly. Matthews suddenly had a flash of mental images of being experimented on, and she wondered if this black site had its own drastic intervention room.

"Apply it to me how?""Now there's something I need to tell you."

8: Capsule

Cameron recognized it the moment she saw it, though she didn't exactly have fond memories of the diagnostic capsule or the long, monotonous hours she spent in it – even under better circumstances when she wasn't being dragged through space and time.

Now that very same capsule was here at the black site, locked away in a small isolated hangar by itself, where it had apparently been for the last five years. The space was completely empty save the capsule and a shaft in the center of the room that gave access to the moon's surface.

"Dr. Gannon and I are the only ones with access to the hangar," said Summers. "An ASTA spacecraft travels through time and returns intact – that makes it the only object of its kind that we know of. Dr. Gannon was so smitten I eventually had to stop him from taking his lunches down here – sometimes he talked to it."

"You run tests on it?" Matthews asked."Periodically. Thus far, we haven't learned anything besides the fact

that it's a spacecraft and it traveled through time, which we knew already. No unique energy signatures beyond the trace Tempus X radiation, no hardware, software, or structural abnormalities."

"But you think the Auerbach settings can be applied here – wait, can we apply them directly here? Is this room a giant Auerbach machine? That's a remarkable engineering –"

"Sorry, Dr. Matthews. It's just a hangar."Matthews was disappointed. Her imagination was getting the better of

her. She entered the capsule for the first time since 143, which by itself seemed to transport her back in time. She remembered that computer console, that seat, and that one window as if she had been in it yesterday. She felt a fondness for it that she didn't expect, a sudden jolt of familiarity as she powered it on. Nostalgia is funny that way.

Matthews felt it stir to life under her seat. Ah, memories.Summers activated a radio transmitter in her hand programmed to the

Auerbach's current settings, but nothing happened to the capsule. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed, while Matthews was still at work at the vessel's controls.

"I'm restoring the system to its default settings. It may be more responsive that way."

But the computer displayed "ACCESS DENIED" in small block letters on the top right corner of the screen. She tried again – no luck. Even when she tried a back-door override, she was locked out.

"You said there were no abnormalities?" said Matthews."Could the system be damaged? It breached space and time – I'm

guessing it wasn't rated for that."Matthews ran it through its usual paces: its routine diagnostic

programs, navigational controls, communications, distress signals, right down to opening and closing the rear hatch -- all else functioned normally.

"Could something have altered the system?" Summers asked."Or someone. Besides you and I, Dr. Gannon had access, and of course

Brillian -- she had two weeks with it." Matthews stared a moment at the computer screen, lost in thought. Then she entered another command and grinned.

"What did you do?" Summers asked."I couldn't restore it to default, so I looked for the earliest

restore point – the moment I disappeared, down to the minute and second." The capsule whirred as of it were sighing. "Try the transmitter again."

Summers did, and for a few seconds nothing happened, but then, for the first and only time since Matthews laid eyes on this damn machine years ago, it surprised her.

"What is that?" asked Summers, frowning at the computer display."That, from what I remember, is supposed to be a cat.""If you are watching this," said the cat, "you have escaped drastic

neural intervention and uncovered the hidden partition in your primitive short-distance diagnostic machine …"

"Is it supposed to be that condescending?" asked Summers."It's not wrong." Matthews rapped her knuckle against the interior

hull of the primitive diagnostic machine."… Please do not interrupt this video presentation," the cat chided.

"This operating system lacks the necessary processing power to adequately respond to unsolicited vocalizations."

"It responded pretty well to that one," said Summers. "What happens if we just keep talking –"

"Please do not interrupt this video presentation …" The cat simply repeated the same error message, so they waited silently for it to continue. After a few seconds it rolled onto its back and played with a

pink yarn-like object. "Analysis indicates a secure local network. Please review the following declassified documents."

"It's a cat because …?" Summers asked."Apparently it's supposed to be a limbic thing. Honestly I'm more of a

dog person, but even if it were a dog it's not like the sight of one would have made spontaneous time travel any less upsetting. It's a little –"

"Dr. Matthews, look."The documents finished loading, and they both started reading. After a

few pages their mysterious visitor wasn't a mystery anymore.

9: Prisoner

Thames looked disappointed when Dr. Matthews returned to his room, and he let out a heavy sigh as if to make that clear. "You didn't stop it, did you?"

"Stop what?" asked Matthews."The attack, the explosion. It would have happened by now if you were

unable to stop it, and clearly no one stopped it because no one listened to me!" He got up and screamed his frustration, pounded the wall with his fists and then kicked the two-way mirror, which shook but didn't shatter. Matthews took a step back towards the door. "Oh you frightened moron!" he sneered. "Just like the rest – afraid of everything, afraid of me, afraid of the faintest idea you don't understand." He lunged at Matthews and grabbed her by the shoulders before she could open the door to get out.

"Look at you," he said. She could feel his breath on her face. "You really think I'd hurt you, after all I've gone through to save you, idiot?" He let go of her and looked back at the mirror. "Enjoying the show back there, safe and sound where no one can touch you? You think I'm so dangerous, but you thought nothing of sending her back in here with me." He turned to Matthews with a grin. "They must not think much of you."

"They think even less of you.""Who, me? Do I look like I'd even hurt a fly?""No," said Matthews. "Not dressed like that anyway."The overhead lights flickered as an energy field was powered on

throughout the room, and the visitor's multicolored costume was replaced by a plain grey jumpsuit with his name printed on a patch on his chest – prison issue. There was a scar that ran from the middle of his forehead to his right temple.

"Well, damn," he said."Sorry about the lights," said Matthews. "That can happen when you

neutralize a cloaking field.""Someone must have told you what you were looking for, because the lot

of you are very not that smart.""And who might have told us?""We both know who.""Is that because you smelled it on me before or did you perhaps escape

a prison transport on your way here?"

"She fed you this information, didn't she? Took her long enough – took her too damn long because she didn't actually prevent the attack – my attack of course. Happened right on schedule. Run for your lives!"

"This isn't about the bombing. If you already accomplished what you came here to do, you wouldn't have any reason to keep lying."

"Maybe I like lying. It's fun. I get to dangle morons on little strings like puppets. It's how I entertain myself. Dance!"

"You probably already knew about the bombing – a pretense to get your foot in the door and give you enough credibility to make us take you seriously. You didn't come here to prevent the explosion or to cause it. It was part of your costume."

Thames gave her mock applause. "Splendid deductive reasoning, Dr. Matthews. The jig is well and truly up. You have unmasked me and uncovered the criminal I really am. You've got me all figured out. Since you're so smart all of a sudden, why don't you really nail me to the wall and tell me what my crime actually is? If you don't think it's that clumsy attempt at terrorism, then what am I here for?"

"You're never going to get it."Thames laughed. He really did seem to be enjoying himself. "You seemed

so sure of yourself – it would be funny if it weren't so sad. Here's the problem, my amateur detective friend: you have a criminal dead to rights, but you don't even know the crime. If I had known you all would be so bad at this I wouldn't have tried so hard.

"See, you are just a puppet, but I'm not even the one making you dance – she is. And she didn't even tell you everything. Maybe she figured you'd mess it up – or maybe she didn't even know, hoped you'd figure it out for her. I wouldn't be surprised. After all, she couldn't even keep hold of me, and I was in handcuffs!"

"And you also avoided drastic neural intervention," said Matthews. "Unless you didn't, which would explain a lot."

"Oh that bitch threatened me every day, even showed me the instruments. Did you see the instruments?"

Matthews shook her head."The only thing worse than the ones that were pointy were the ones

that weren't pointy." He shuddered. "You think she's the hero in this story, and I'm the villain. You don't know her as well as I do. You have no idea –"

"We do, though, have some idea of what you're capable of. According to the file we decrypted you were a temporal investigator, like you told us, yet you were caught trying to commandeer a ship for an unauthorized trip to the past. That's when they found the secret accounts for investments made in the past to exploit your knowledge of the future. Sounds pretty conventional actually."

"Maybe you should let me go then since I'm so harmless.""Then you killed three people while resisting arrest."He shrugged. "Maybe not so harmless then?""You don't deny it?""Why bother? It doesn't get you a single step closer to why I'm here.

But even after reading all of that in my file you came in here anyway, thought you'd corner me like a caged animal. Why would you risk being alone with a killer?"

"Because you're not trying to escape. You haven't since you got here, and maybe it's because this is such an inescapable fortress that it's really not possible, but something tells me the guy who jumped centuries to get away from the time police might have figured out a way by now if he really wanted to."

"SO WHY AM I HERE? Stop fishing for answers, it makes me deeply sad for you."

"Maybe nothing," said Matthews with a shrug."What?""Maybe there's nothing you want. Just stringing us along, enjoying the

free hospitality.""Hospitality? You call this hospitality?""As an alternative to drastic neural intervention, I think it is. Here

we were thinking you were planning something intricate and ingenious – microsurgery, like you explained it. Should have known after you crash-landed at Cobalt Pierre that you didn't really have a plan. You've just been vamping ever since."

Thames got one of those mischievous twinkles in his eyes again. "Is this the part where you trick me into revealing my plan just so I can prove you wrong? Appeal to my ego? Not a bad idea in theory, since I am quite likely a narcissist and I do take pleasure in demonstrating how much cleverer I am than you, but really that's desperate. I'm disappointed, I expected more from you – no, wait, I didn't. So if that's all, you can go

back to your friend behind the mirror and twiddle your thumbs some more, and I'll just keep sitting here enjoying these five-star luxury accommodations because if you think I have nothing, than you are less than nothing. You are a negative value. What you lack could fill the void between stars."

Matthews did leave after that. She had been fishing, had been appealing to his ego, and had hoped to corner him into making a mistake. But had he made a mistake? Matthew's wasn't sure -- probably not.

She returned to Summers to go over the disappointing interrogation -- if you could even call it that -- but when she found Summers she was still staring at Thames through the two-way mirror, not looking victorious or defeated, but more like she had seen a ghost.

"That could have gone better," Matthews started. "Let's review his file, see if we can find some connection to anything he just said in there besides just confirming how big an asshole he is."

After a few moments Summers turned to her and swallowed hard. "You're not going to believe this -- I'm not even sure I believe it," she said. "But I think I know who his accomplice is."

10: Burned

Jesmond Ouvert had lived in that house for four years. It sat on a patch of wooded land just off of Lake Careau with a view of both the sunset and the rising of the planet Shui Zhimindi over the horizon. His closest neighbor -- a writer, Jesmond thought, probably trying to find his muse out in nature -- was friendly, scarce, half a mile down the shore, and didn't ask questions. It had been weeks since he'd even seen him.

You couldn't find this place unless you knew what you were looking for, and even then you might miss it. That was the point, and exactly why when he saw a run-down shuttlecraft bobbing on the edge of the lake and a disheveled man frantically kicking his leg into the water to extinguish his burning pants Jesmond said to himself, "Shit."

"Hello, friend!" said the strange man once he was no longer on fire. The grey cuff of his jumpsuit was burned black.

"Who are you calling friend, idiot?""You, silly!" He reached Jesmond and patted him on the shoulder.

Jesmond didn't return the gesture -- or any gesture."How did you find me here?""We still have a few mutual friends, Jez.""Had a few friends. I'll deal with them later.""Oh, Jez, I can never tell if you're kidding." He patted Jesmond on

the shoulder again. If he did that again, more than his leg would be on fire.

"Stop calling me that," said Jesmond."You've never been able to stay mad at me.""You just burned me, Thames. Four years just ... fucking gone. You

think we're friends? And you do that to me?""I wasn't followed.""Followed? You think it matters that you weren't followed? You crash-

landed a stolen shuttle in my backyard. You may as well have sent up flares, put up billboards and spotlights. You think this place is ever going to be safe again? Four years!"

That was the end of the conversation as far as Jesmond was concerned. He walked back to his cabin. He always had a backup plan. Even after settling comfortably into this place and thinking after a year or so that he could make a life here indefinitely, he knew to be ready to leave, but

as he thought of retrieving his emergency pack from under the kitchen pantry and burning it all down -- literally and figuratively -- he felt a regret he didn't expect. He liked it here.

"Four years and this was the best you could do?" said Thames, who followed Jesmond inside. "A dull little house in the middle of nowhere, all by yourself, looking over your shoulder until you die. That's the life you planned out? You should be thanking me."

"Thanking you? For what?""Because I'm not just your problem, I'm also your solution."Jesmond barely listened. He pulled a black titanium case from the

pantry. It was heavy and secured with a 12-digit combination lock, but it was small -- he'd learned to pack light.

"You know how much I've always admired you Jez --""Keep my name out of your mouth.""-- I learned everything I know from you. Remember when you were at

the Global Monetary Trust on Nuterra 4? You convinced them you were a business loan specialist named Lenny Funt, got them to hire you for more than a year so you could transfer millions of credits into an encrypted account in the next star system. They never figured it out -- they threw you a going away party when you left!

"Or that time you ransomed the endangered snails back to the Threatened Species Habitat when the snails were STILL IN the habitat? Now that took a special set of balls, and you've got 'em my friend."

Jesmond was busy setting up the next part of his escape, which involved a remote igniter -- a well placed spark he could activate from afar like a pilot light. It would look like an accident. Jesmond would be presumed dead. The neighbor might be sad for a minute; maybe he'd write about it.

"So here's the thing," Thames continued."How many are dead?" asked Jesmond."Dead where?""Wherever it is you're running from. How many bodies did you leave

there?""You're starting to sound a little judgmental, my friend.""Let's get one thing straight, Thames. I'm a con man, you're a

sociopath, and sociopaths don't have friends. They have means to an end. So what's yours?"

"What's my what?""Your end, Thames. Ask what you came here to ask so I can tell you to

fuck off and be done with it. Because of you I have plans to make.""Well, it all started with --""Get on with it!""Trust me, the context is important." Thames told Jesmond about the

Temporal Science Agency. For a moment Jesmond was impressed despite himself. He had known about the temporal investigators operating in the Sol 1 System. He probably could have infiltrated them himself had he not been forced into hiding, but still -- his interest was piqued. He tried not to show it, but ...

"I knew that would interest you," said Thames. "See that's always been your problem. You're so damn linear. You've wasted four years of your life and your talent on a cabin you're about to set ablaze. You think here and now are all there is, so you settle for ... this. And that's why I'm here -- because I didn't just bring a shuttle, and you don't need a bag where you're going."

"And where exactly do you think I'm going?""You're going to help me. Technically you've already helped me. You

will have already helped me."That made Jesmond laugh. "I don't know what language you're speaking,

Thames, but I understood the word 'help' and I'm not inclined.""I thought that might be the case, and it's understandable that you

wouldn't trust me after I told the authorities on Seryezny how to track you down four years ago -- they're still searching I think, and they have terribly inhumane criminal justice procedures involving severed limbs. But as there is no time to convince you with my unassailable logic, I've had to prepare other means to convince you."

"What other means?""That shuttle is a wreck. Barely got me here. Hardly anything on it

works. Nothing I could do but send a distress beacon -- to Seryezny. I know they're not the closest, but in addition to abject cruelty they're very well known for their shuttle repair skills, probably."

"When did you send the beacon?""About an hour before I landed."Jesmond's fingers went slack and his case dropped to the floor. He was

short of breath. "Congratulations, Thames, you're a sociopath AND an idiot.

You don't seem to know how time works, so let me explain it to you. There's no time for either of us to escape before they get here -- not you or me -- so what was the point of all this? Was it just spite?"

"Ye of little faith, Jez, you don't give me enough credit. I'll have you know I understand time quite well. I've had time to get good at it. Remember I've been working for Tempor-Sci, so I happen to know that we have precisely the amount of time we need and not a minute more. But it will require you to make a decision. And it'll be such an easy decision you'll immediately apologize for every rotten thing you've ever said to me or about me behind my back. And you'll beg me to take you with me."

"Did you make sure to leave enough time for your rambling?""I did, actually.""Take me where?""To end that bitch.""You'll have to be more specific.""The one who put me in a metal box and wanted to keep me there for the

rest of my life. The one who threatened drastic neural intervention if I stepped out of line. Now I'm going to snuff her out before she's even born."

"The rest of your life? That sounds a bit dramatic for an ordinary con, and I know you, so --"

"Three," said Thames. "The number of dead. I never answered your question before. They sent three agents after me from an internal investigations unit, but I knew they were coming. They thought they could take me from my own home -- such a dumb idea to try to apprehend someone where they live, as if I wouldn't be ready. I was in a hurry, though, and didn't think it necessary to really make them suffer, so I rigged the place to explode -- not unlike your setup for this place actually. It was all quite painless probably. But still that's nothing compared to the damage you can do by interfering with the timeline in the wrong way -- might have given me a life sentence for that alone. But I did learn a few things. I was paying attention. I know how to interfere in the right way, but I need your help. And it's going to be so good for you -- you get to live, actually live, and not just survive out in the woods somewhere waiting to get burned by some asshole like me. Even better, you'd never have to see me again. How could you possibly resist that?"

"How much longer do we have?" Jesmond asked.

"In a very real way, all the time in the world. But in a much more real way, 17 minutes."

Jesmond's only question to himself was whether he valued his freedom more than he hated Thames. There was a not insignificant part of him willing to endure torture and even death just to avoid helping him. But practicality won out -- it always did with him. There was a clear and present danger mere minutes away, and it seemed there was also a way out, and he needed to take it.

Perhaps intuiting what Jesmond was thinking, Thames assured him, "We never really worked well together, but I know we'll work splendidly apart. I also know you think I have no soul, but sure I've got one of those, I just don't use it as much."

Jesmond shook his head. "There's nothing inside of you, Thames. What you lack could fill the void between stars."

11: Void

Summers brought Matthews back to her office, closed the door behind her, and locked it.

"What happened? What are you doing?" asked Matthews, who watched Summers rummage through her desk. If she was looking for something in particular, Matthews couldn't figure out what.

"Desperately trying to disprove a theory," Summers explained."Care to share?""Not really.""That puts me at a bit of a disadvantage," said Matthews."You don't know the half of it." Dr. Summers took a moment to gather

her thoughts and then explained. "We wondered if he had an accomplice. I thought for a while it might have been you since you traveled through time not far from where he appeared and in the same facility you worked for -- that's one hell of a coincidence. But if you're conspiring to alter the past why would you waste your resources planting two people in the same place and time -- of course you wouldn't, it's silly when you think about it: it's like looking at the Earth in just two dimensions. No, you plant someone earlier. You set the table."

"That makes sense. Then Thames shows up here and finishes the job -- whatever the job really is. So whoever it was could be long dead right now."

Summers sighed and handed Matthews a data pad. "Tell me I'm crazy. That would be better than the alternative."

Matthews read what Summers handed her -- the service record of a former ASTA supervisor, Warren Hyde.

"What makes you think this is the accomplice?" said Matthews."He was the first person to run this facility," Summers began, and she

swallowed hard before adding, "He was also my grandfather and helped me get this job."

"Your grandfather? You think your grandfather was the accomplice? That's one hell of a long con."

"Is that all it is? Is that all I am? Just a living, breathing means to an end, or a happy accident if I'm lucky? Or maybe I'm not even supposed to be here at all."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need to take this one step at a

time, starting with why you're convinced all of a sudden that your grandfather is a time traveler. That sounds like a leap to me."

"Time travel is a leap, and we've already proven that," said Summers. "This is just one more small step." She took the data pad back from Matthews and looked back down at her grandfather's face. "It was something Thames said at the end while you were in there with him: 'What you lack could fill the void between stars.' My grandfather used to say that when he was angry -- those exact words. I remember once he said that to my high school physics teacher when I got a B- on an exam and I was almost too embarrassed to show my face in that class again. He said it about our congressman when he voted to cut ASTA's funding. The same words in that same way."

"Take a step back. What do you think is more likely: that two people in the universe happened to stumble onto the same phrase, or that you're secretly related to a temporal spy?"

"Under normal circumstances I'd agree with you, but I don't believe in coincidences, not like I used to. How can you when what appears to be a simple coincidence can be engineered at any time or place, past or present?"

"We don't have to believe in anything, not without proof," said Matthews. "Let's treat it like data. The way I see it, we have nine words of unknown origin -- and a hypothesis, that they originate in the future and were carried into the past by Warren Hyde, your grandfather. He's not around anymore to speak for himself, so without time traveling capabilities of our own we can't exactly ask him directly." Matthews gave Summers an expectant look.

"And?" said Summers sharply."Oh I just thought you might suddenly tell me about an actual time

machine on the premises that I don't know about.""I wish," said Summers. "If we had that, we wouldn't have needed to

bring you here -- no offense.""So we have no actual access to the future or past to verify. That

just leaves us with Thames, who wouldn't exactly be forthcoming, and me -- I've been to the future, but I didn't experience all that much of it, and I've never heard that phrase before."

"There may be one more source," said Summers. "The capsule.""You're right, we can ask the cat what it knows -- which is high on

the list of sentences I never thought I'd say.""I don't know if I'm hoping to find something or nothing. Nothing is

back to the drawing board, but something ...""That's why we can't jump to conclusions," said Matthews. "Not until

we know."

Once more Matthews found herself sitting in that cramped little diagnostic capsule staring down at the computer terminal. It wasn't difficult for her and Dr. Summers to reload the cat now that they knew how, and it appeared again mid-paw-lick. It rolled onto its back and tossed its yarn ball into the air, but let it drop to the ground when it saw the two women staring at it again.

"Reopening declassified documents," said the cat. It displayed the Thames criminal records that they had already seen.

"Are these all the documents that are available?" asked Summers, who stood behind Matthews's chair.

"This operating system lacks the necessary processing power to adequately respond to unsolicited vocalizations."

"Are you familiar with the phrase, 'What you lack could fill the void between stars'?"

"This operating system lacks the necessary processing power to adequately respond to unsolicited vocalizations."

"Do you have any information at all pertaining to a void?""This operating system lacks the necessary processing power to

adequately respond to unsolicited vocalizations.""Are you useful in any way, shape, or form?""This operating system lacks the necessary processing power –""Yes, yes, I get it," said Summers. "Do you have any ideas, Dr.

Matthews?"Matthews drummed her fingers against her armrest for a few moments.

Then she asked the cat, "What would be considered solicited vocalizations?""This application is programmed to respond to eight predesignated

voice commands: 'Stop,' 'Start,' 'Pause,' 'Resume,' 'Repeat,' 'Volume Up,' 'Volume Down,' and 'Unlock Supplemental Documentation.'"

Matthews rolled her eyes – the cat had buried the lede. "Well then unlock supplemental documentation," she said, "obviously." She was mad that she even had to ask – yes, she was definitely more of a dog person.

"Unlocking supplemental documentation." And the cat revealed thumbnail images corresponding to a hidden cache of files. They were retrieved from an abandoned shuttle craft found on the second moon of the planet Shui Zhimindi. There was also an incident report about the recovery of the craft and a nearby cabin fire. No was found that could directly connect the fire to Thames – no evidence of anything at all left in the fire, which itself was suspicious. Was it a safe house? Did it belong an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time?

"How many files are in there?" asked Summers."A few dozen," said Matthews, who took another second to count them

all. "37 to be exact." So they went through them one by one, starting with the most important. There was a distress beacon sent to a place called Seryezny. The incident report filed by an investigator from Seryezny was unhelpful as there was apparently little of the incident to report – Thames had not kept any files on-board that could be used to trace him, so Matthews and Summers began to feel frustrated, as the investigators must have, to be left sorting through boring ship's diagnostics results, unhelpful star maps, and what looked like a music play list, so at least now they knew what songs would be popular with homicidal time travelers in the future: "Son of the Moon," "Pilot Light," something called "Fire Sky Love" – whatever the hell that meant.

Then both of them stopped suddenly, with alarm, as they neared the bottom of the list and saw something that probably didn't mean much to the folks in Seryezny, but certainly made an impression on Matthews and Summers.

A song title: "The Void Between Stars."

12: Something New

Maybe that song should have been enough to confirm what Dr. Summers feared. The lyrics were contained in the cartoon kitten's cache of hidden documents, and her grandfather's exact words were there. But there was still doubt. Just a song … not a conclusion. They needed something measurable and concrete. She took a deep breath.

"We need to test me for Tempus X," Summers said."But you haven't been involved in a time-travel event.""I am a time-travel event," said Summers. "At least, if I'm right,

then I'm directly descended from one.""Even if it is heritable, who's to say if we could even trace it to a

specific cause?""There's no reason to think it would work. There's also no reason to

think it wouldn't. We've never tested something like this. How many time travelers leave children or grandchildren? How would we know if they did? The worst case scenario is that we find nothing and we're right back where we started, no harm done. The best case scenario …" It still felt surreal to her. "Best case scenario is we learn something new."

Dr. Matthews was coming to the same conclusion and answered, "Well how does it work?"

That would require an assist from Pecke Gannon.

Dr. Gannon was surprised by this new information. No, surprised wasn't the right word -- mind-altered perhaps, or just this side of hysteria, which he tried to hide, badly. And they hadn't even told him about the cat. They were pretty sure he'd want to meet the cat, and that could wait until after the existential crisis was over.

He seemed almost jealous that he hadn't descended from time traveling criminals. Or maybe he did. Maybe any number of people did. They would have to test everyone in the facility for Tempus X. Everyone in ASTA, maybe, or everyone alive. They could trace lineages of time-line interference back through generations, pinpoint countless possible alterations of history and --

"Slow down, Dr. Gannon," said Summers. "It hasn't even worked once yet. We can start re-sequencing the entire human genome later."

That testing was normally a simple sensor scan, but if it was DNA, if

it was in the genes, then it would be in the blood. Dr. Gannon carefully drew a vial's worth from Summers's arm, then prepared to do the same to Matthews.

"You've traveled," said Gannon. "We need a control so we have something to compare it to."

He didn't need to convince her of the need, but she hated needles slightly more than she liked science. However, the pain would only last a moment, and science is forever, so she rolled up her sleeve, squeezed her eyes shut and thought of England.

It took less than an hour for Gannon to return with the results. Dr. Summers knew such a quick turnaround from Gannon meant either abject failure or unqualified success, though she wasn't sure which result would have been which. She studied his face when he returned from the lab like a jury that just came back with the verdict. And his toothy grin made it clear – he found something new, and it was definitive.

"There's something," said Dr. Gannon."What kind of something?" asked Summers."It's definitely some kind of something.""That's the kind of specificity we pay you for, Dr. Gannon.""Forgive me," said Gannon. "Blood analysis isn't my primary area of

expertise." By that he meant he only had one degree in it. "I know this is top secret, even by top secret standards, but I got a second opinion from Dr. Cormier upstairs in biotech -- I didn't even tell him what I was looking for, just asked him to compare your slide with Dr. Matthews's, and threw in my own blood sample as another control -- and, you know, just in case maybe I have some secret time travel in my own family history. The bad news is I don't."

"I'm so sorry none of your ancestors created you to alter the timeline," said Dr. Matthews.

"It at least would have been a good ice-breaker at conferences.""The results, Dr. Gannon?" said Summers."Positive," said Gannon. "Positive results for a discrete genetic

marker that Dr. Cormier didn't recognize. It was absent from my sample – disappointing – but present in both of your samples. Cormier was curious of course. I didn't tell him what any of it meant of course – security clearances and whatnot – so we might want to give him a gift basket, or some kind of bonus – however we handle that sort of thing. Is that a thing

we do? Bonuses? I've been thinking about asking for a raise, but don't know how payroll works for secret science facilities. Is there a top-secret HR department I should consult?"

Summers was about to interrupt, but Gannon anticipated her next question. "Before you ask, I realize that finding a discrete genetic marker still isn't definitive, especially with such a small sample size, unless we can attribute it directly to a time-travel event. We'd need to find some way to test it against Tempus X – which I did. I used the Auerbach –"

"Wait, the Auerbach can do that too?" said a wide-eyed Dr. Matthews. "Realizing that's not the point, but something I plan on circling back to."

"With a few slight modifications.""A few slight modifications?" said Summers at the thought of

unauthorized equipment changes. "Let's circle back to that too.""Dr. Matthews really made it all possible," said Gannon. "She helped

identify the energy signature that approximates Tempus X, which I was able to apply to a human genomic model --"

"Using a machine designed to study atmospheres," Matthews reiterated. "Just making sure we're all clear on that."

"I guess it was mildly impressive," said Gannon with a shrug."I wasn't there, but I'm co-authoring your paper, and that's final.""There was initially no effect when applying the Tempus X signature to

the human genetic sequence, so I increased the amplitude and then bam! A discrete genetic marker comparable to both of your samples."

"Comparable? Not identical?" said Dr. Summers."Well, we're working with an approximation of Tempus X, so we could

only arrive at an approximation of the genetic mutation. But it's close enough that I think it's highly unlikely that any other factors account for these changes. Whether it's your grandfather or someone else, Dr. Summers, congratulations, there has definitely been a temporal event in your biological lineage." Gannon was grinning -- of course he was.

Dr. Summers wasn't sure how she felt. "My grandfather ran this facility," she said. "It's something here that Thames is waiting for – or looking for."

But Matthews thought something didn't add up. "Why have Warren Hyde run a black site just to plant something?"

"Or someone.""You!" Matthews said as she suddenly realized. "He planted you. Tell

me, is there a specific set of protocols in place for a temporal event, like someone crash-landing in a secure facility for instance?"

"There's no rule book that says, 'In case of time traveler, break glass.'"

"But there are rules governing this place.""Of course.""And I'd assume there was a very specific process you underwent in

response to the breach. This is ASTA – there are regulations for bathroom breaks."

"Naturally.""So it's this," said Matthews. "All of this. What you've been doing

since Thames got here, what I've been doing since you brought me here. Something about this very process changes the future somehow. Maybe it's the smallest thing: someone who's here who otherwise wouldn't have been, or even just a step you took left instead of right. Maybe this is supposed to take me away from the Mars Project, maybe it was supposed to take Dr. Cormier's attention off of another project."

"Should I have not have done that?" Gannon interrupted."That was just one example," said Matthews."One of many examples," Summers added. "Many, many examples. A

theoretically infinite number of examples that we couldn't hope to narrow down at all because we don't know the outcome we're trying to prevent. It's like trying to put together a puzzle in the dark when you don't know what the picture is and you don't have the pieces."

"It would be more accurate to say we have too many pieces – and also the thing about the dark and the picture," Gannon mansplained.

"The point is there is no feasible way to solve the problem in front of us," said Summers. "We don't have enough information, and there's no way for us to get it."

"Maybe we don't need to," said Matthews. "We're not the ones who need to put together a puzzle, Thames is. We just need to stop him from doing it."

"How would we do that?""We just deny him the pieces," said Matthews. "He may not have gotten

what he wants yet – he probably hasn't, in fact, because if he had he would have nothing to lose by just telling us."

"Unless he just likes taunting us because he's an prick."

"Fair point," said Matthews. "Very fair point. He is a tremendous prick. But what if in addition to being an prick he's also practical. He would have to be in order to plan something so meticulous, something that involves moving parts in different time periods but precise enough to produce an specific intended effect. It's impossible to pinpoint exactly what he wants given the information we have, but it's possible we'll prevent it by completely reversing course, just undoing everything that was done in response to him showing up."

"And what if he's counting on that? What if that's his plan, and we're playing right into it?"

Matthews didn't have a good answer. "We'll never be certain. A roll of the dice may be as good as we're going to get."

"So then what do we do about Thames?" said Summers. "Just let him go? He killed three people."

"Technically he will have killed three people, and I don't think there's a statute yet for prosecuting the murders of victims who haven't been born yet."

Summers crossed her arms, and Gannon grinned, knowing what it looked like when she was having an idea. She said, "We may not have to hold him for a future crime."

"Do you mean the breach of Cobalt Pierre? Can you make that stick?""Not without risking too much going public. But there may be a way to

kill two birds with one stone. However, it requires some creative ethics."Matthews raised her eyebrows. "How creative?"

13: 2A

"Yes, I understand this is unusual," Summers said when she alerted the head of her covert field team at Cobalt Pierre to abruptly call them back – and for that other request. "Leave everything, and return immediately." She turned to Matthews with a look that said, I hope you're right.

So do I.It would take hours to undo the scientific and security apparatus

Summers had put in place, and another ten hours for Matthews to get back to the Mars research station. But first she wanted to be there to see Thames one last time. It was the first time she and Summers interviewed him together.

"May I help you?" he said to them in that empty room, grinning and relaxed, reclined on the floor in the corner.

"We're just about done here," said Dr. Summers."So I'm free to go?""Not quite. We're suspending our investigation. Dr. Matthews is

returning to her work, and so are we.""I thought I was your work.""We thought you were. Under closer examination you're not.""So I'm free to go." Thames seemed confused, but there was still

amusement in his voice."You're being transferred to more appropriate authorities.""And what exactly are the 'appropriate authorities'? What could you

possibly think you have me on?""Terrorism," said Summers, as if it were obvious."Oh that's adorable. For what, breaking into that silly building? I

applaud you for your creativity. Do you plan on submitting evidence of time travel?"

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, Mr. Snitzky."Thames's face changed. "Why are you calling me by that name?""Because it's your name: Gerry Snitzky. You set off an improvised

explosive device at the Cobalt Pierre base in support of the Luna Libre movement. You live alone, no known family, a history of paranoid delusions. The interview conducted with you at the scene was very enlightening."

"I see. You can't hold me for any actual crimes, so I guess this is the best you can do. But people already know what this Gerry Snitzky looks

like – I already know what he looks like. How do you expect to pass me off as him?"

"I'm concerned with this second persona you seem to have constructed, Mr. Snitzky – some kind of dissociative identity, don't you think, Dr. Matthews?"

"Yes, I'm sure someone here will confirm that diagnosis," Matthews answered.

Thames looked back and forth between Matthews and Summers, perhaps doing some mental calculus, perhaps the same calculus that they had been doing. Summers had called her team back from Cobalt Pierre – and they were bringing Gerry Snitzky, who really was the bomber they apprehended and who really did seem to suffer from delusions. Thames was right, there was no legitimate way to lock him up, but there was an illegitimate way.

Matthews wondered what Summers planned to do with Snitzky after Thames assumed his identity. Summers just sighed -- she was hoping to figure that out by the time Snitzky arrived.

Thames gave it another few moments' thought, but then grinned again. "No matter, sure beats the hell out of drastic neural intervention."

And that was all. Matthews and Summers had hoped to get a read on Thames once they told him their plan. Would he be sad, happy, angry, amused, indifferent? Instead they were like poker players sitting across the table from each other, both showing their hands but still not knowing who won.

Matthews's mind kept wandering back to it during all 10 hours of the flight back to the Mars station. She had revealed far more about the future than Brillian had authorized her to reveal – which was nothing – but she hadn't been wiped from existence. Matthews hoped that meant she made the right decisions, and that she was still making the right decisions.

She paused for a moment to consider her surroundings; she was reasonably sure she still existed, though she had no first-hand experience of not existing so she couldn't entirely rule it out. She was in the same shuttlecraft that had brought her to Terra Luna, with the same taciturn ASTA men at the helm, and she was conscious of existing, if that meant anything. Could you really extinguish consciousness? Not just end consciousness by killing, but prevent an existing consciousness from ever having been conscious? Was there a difference?

She had never considered questions like these before. But that's what

time travel and 10 hours in a quiet shuttle will do to you.

"I wouldn't say we were lost without you, per se," said Dr. Osborn when Matthews docked at the station. Her escorts closed the hatch after her and flew away without a word.

"You don't have to say what I already know," said Matthews. "Did Jaeson leave already?"

"A few hours ago. He wished he could have said goodbye, but his shuttle arrived sooner than expected. We might get fooled into thinking ASTA is an efficient organization."

Matthews laughed along even though she knew Harris's surprisingly quick departure was her doing. She wanted him to get back to his intended three-week leave as soon as possible; for all she knew he would conceive a child with Bonnie that would be the ancestor of a man or woman who would save the universe in a couple hundred years.

"Tell me about the mineral spectrum analysis," said Matthews. "Is it still a mess? What can I do to get us back on track?"

"Easy, Cam, you've been traveling for 10 hours. Don't you want to rest for a minute? Maybe have a cookie? Did they have cookies where you were?"

"All I wanted to do while I was away was get back to work. We could engineer an artificial atmosphere on Mars in a few years and possibly terraform in my lifetime. You don't get there by stopping for cookies."

"You don't get anywhere without cookies – or more broadly, calories that the body burns for energy so it doesn't pass out and contaminate important research."

"So dumb Davidson is still in the doghouse?""You called him 'dumb Davidson'! I'm proud of you. And yes, but only

in the doghouse because putting him out of an airlock would incur more paperwork."

"I might be able to help us make up some time. I might have an in on an Auerbach."

Osborn stopped dead in her tracks. "An 'in'? On an Auerbach?""Someone might owe me a favor.""Someone owes you an Auerbach-sized favor?""It has to do with why I was away, and I can't talk about it, so don't

ask.""Jaeson was wrong – you're not with the CIA, you're clearly with the

mafia, and on behalf of the Mars Project, my sincerest thanks to the mafia. If they need us to legalize racketeering on the first Martian colony, it's not a thing we're remotely authorized to do but will totally do anyway."

Matthews questioned whether she should still pursue the Auerbach at all since she was still afraid of altering the time line, and she wouldn't have had access to an Auerbach were it not for Thames's infiltration. Then again, Thames's arrival took Matthews away from the Mars Project and slowed down their progress, so an Auerbach could put that right. Also, Matthews just really wanted one.

It was like that for days after Matthews returned to the station: questioning not just her decisions but her slightest movements for fear that she might send an unknown shock wave centuries down the time line. In a general sense everyone understands that their actions have consequences, but for the future to be tangible instead of theoretical … she stubbed her toe at one point and hid in her quarters for an hour, just in case.

Matthews passed her free time in Lab 2A, the atmospheric lab where she also spent many of her working hours. But when it was empty she was able to just stare out the window at the surface of the planet. It helped her remember that there were countless things in the universe that could affect the future more than she could. Planets, moons, and stars, close and far, were in a constant state of happening. Even the uninhabited planet below was alive and changing. She couldn't always perceive those changes with her naked eye, but they were there.

She felt grounded looking down and out and around her. Over time she worried less that she may affect the future and more about how she would affect it. The best she could do was make the most of time.

The Auerbach arrived a week later, and it took the better part of two days to install the unit in 2A and integrate it into their systems, but it would be worth it. When the installation was complete she returned to her cramped living quarters, exhausted but unable to sleep because she had been going over the long list of experiments and diagnostics she wanted to conduct ever since she first laid eyes on the machine at the black site. This one wasn't modified for blood analysis, but after the whole ordeal Matthews considered that a perk.

After laying in bed for close to an hour just staring at the ceiling, she gave up, got up, and switched on the computer next to her bed. From her room she had access to all the station's research, which was probably why

she only ever slept about four hours a night. And she wasn't alone; when she opened a datalog she could see who else was logged in, and tonight was a sleepless night for Osborn as well. And both Davidsons.

Then there was a glitch of some kind. It startled Matthews for a second -- another stubbed-toe moment, wondering if she had destroyed the future in one reckless keystroke. But then it was familiar, a color distortion on the screen that flickered red and blue and green before returning to normal. There was something new in the system though. An icon in the bottom right corner showed a local file only accessible to her console. She opened it.

And there was a cat."What are you doing here?" Matthews said in irrational, conspiratorial

whisper, as if anyone outside would be listening in. But this time the animated creature didn't say anything. It batted around its pink yarn-like ball object for a moment, then widened its eyes and gave Matthews a thumbs up with a conspicuously human-shaped hand. It gave a nod of its head and a wide toothy smile. It seemed to be awkwardly performing the body language of approval. Then it simply walked off screen and the program closed itself. When Matthews tried to open it again, it was gone.

She wasn't entirely sure what that meant, and the following morning she wasn't entirely sure she hadn't dreamt it, but she took it as a good sign, and after that she worried less about what was yet to come.

EPILOGUE: Closed Loop

If Brillian had a dollar for every former prisoner who tried to erase her existence, she would have exactly eight dollars – though she'd technically be broke since dollars were discontinued as standard currency sixty-one years ago, replaced by universal unified credits – colloquially known as ooks -- and with the exchange rate at the time of the transition she'd have more like 0.767 ooks per attempt to erase her existence.

Either way, after Thames escaped custody and vowed revenge against her in the form of existence-erasing – rookie mistake to reveal that to the person you're planning to erase – Brillian was only mildly concerned. As soon as he said so he would have set in motion a sequence of events. Brillian didn't know exactly what that sequence was, but he probably failed because here she was, still existing. So Brillian had already stopped him, she just didn't know how yet. Simple enough: she just had to figure out how she would have already un-prevented herself from being born. Again.

She entered an empty isolation room aboard her ship and activated a temporal dampening field. As history changed, so would her memories of it, so she needed to remove herself from the effects of linear time in order to maintain perspective. From here she was now an objective observer of time, while the computer console she activated was still connected to the ongoing timeline, allowing her to spot discrepancies.

Killing her ancestors would be the obvious choice. Three of her former prisoners had gone that route. Or maybe he would just disrupt events so that they never met, cutting off her branch of the family tree -- three others tried that one. The last two tried to kill her as a baby, but only an idiot would leave her baby-self unprotected. Whatever Thames's method, the first step for Brillian would be to review her family history. He wouldn't go too far back – the farther back, the greater the risk to himself and others: for all Thames knew they shared an ancestor a thousand years ago, and he'd end up erasing himself too. But he probably knew more about her tree than most given how long he had infiltrated the Temporal Science Agency.

Going back three-hundred years her ancestors were still as she remembered them according to the latest historical records. She actually had her lineage committed to memory going back four-hundred and eight years; it was something all Tempor-Sci agents were required to do upon

joining – Begats Study. This safeguarded them against the kinds of timeline hacks Thames was trying to undertake. Some scientists memorize pi to a thousand digits, others can tell you who their parents' parents' parents' parents' parents' parents were.

Oh wait, that's new, Brillian thought. She found a name that wasn't there before. At least, she didn't think it was. Perhaps she was late in activating the dampening field. Maybe her memories were already being overwritten and her recollections were starting to cloud over in the transition from one reality to the next. But this Warren Hyde was a mystery to her. She didn't recognize his name or his file photo, but he apparently worked closely with theoretical sci-tech director John Cave, who Brillian did recognize. It was unlikely that either crossed paths with any of her progenitors, but her family line did pass through ASTA a few times, so it was worth looking into.

That's when she found a discrepancy, and discrepancies are where temporal scientists thrive -- unless the temporal scientists are being erased from history, in which case they don't thrive so much as get erased from history. There was an ASTA researcher in her tree some decades after the first recorded appearance of Warren Hyde in the organization: Patricia Osborn

She worked on the Mars Project that set the stage for the colonization of the red planet. But these records indicated that her husband Paul Dressen, a clinical pathologist based on Earth, was not stationed with her. That was the first discrepancy. The second was two other scientists abruptly transferred from lunar assignments to the Mars Project.

This was giving her a mild headache. Her knowledge of this period wasn't as clear as it once was. That was a good sign and a bad sign. It meant she was onto something, but also that Thames might have been onto something too. There was some change that could very well terminate her existence once she shut off the dampening field -- if she ever could shut it off. Best case scenario: she might have to revise her entire understanding of her family tree.

She really just should have subjected that prick to drastic neural intervention when she had the chance.

But lo and behold, there he was, and everything fell into place. Thames appeared in this period as Gerry Snitzky, a mentally ill man who set off a bomb on the moon. But how would that affect Osborn on the Mars

Project? There were pieces missing, and then Brillian realized that she must be the one who had to fill them. She could see now that Thames got it all wrong, and that made her giggle. She had made an error in identifying her own ancestry, and he was actually helping her correct it. Figuring out the rest involved a few hours of math and the calculation of probabilities, and also an aspirin for the headache, but it was clear to her now that Paul Dressen wasn't her ancestor -- James Davidson was. Well that explains my chin, Brillian thought.

Her mind was so foggy because it would be her own actions in response to Thames's interference that would complete the picture, and she was only just figuring them out. This was a first for her: Thames had hoped to prevent Brillian's existence, but instead his revenge plot set in motion the sequence of events that would cause Brillian to be born. It's what was known as a closed loop, and if she had a dollar for every time she encountered a closed loop in her own timeline, she would have just one dollar, but this one was worth a million ooks! She could barely contain her excitement at the prospect of writing the research paper about this event and then spending months painstakingly reviewing and correcting her genealogy record. She fantasized about the font in which she'd write it and formatting options for the index and appendix.

Don't get ahead of yourself, she thought. Before she could do any of that she would need to execute these next steps just as carefully as Thames had tried to. She shut down the dampening field and waited for a moment -- yes, she was still currently existing, which was another very good sign. After a few last calculations she headed for her ship's control room and plotted a course for the past to pick up one Dr. Cameron Matthews from lunar orbit.