I can’t travel through time on my own. I can send messages through the
timestream, but I can’t actually travel to these places unless I have help.
Fortunately, my ability gives me access to people who can give me that help.
Throughout my travels, I’ve learned to endear myself to others, so they do
what I need them to without question, or compensation. I’m not evil, so I’m
not trying to manipulate people, or anything. I just want people to be nicer
to each other, and the best way I know to teach them that lesson is to make
it personal. I’ve kept a lot from them, though. You see, one thing I learned
about my abilities is that they’re a lot more complicated than I knew at
first. Yes, I can teleport sound, and yes it also allows me to carry on
conversations across time. That’s not all, though. I can also teleport my
entire consciousness. Theoretically, I would be able to do this to take over
someone else’s mind, but that’s always been very distasteful for me. So I
only do it to myself.
I periodically send my mind back to my younger body. I don’t do this to make
myself youthful again, since I drank a couple bottles of water once to stay
young anyway. No, I just don’t want people to know how old I am, and what
I’ve been through. When I go back in time, I prevent myself from doing all
the things I did. So I can recall those experiences, but they never happened
to anyone else in this timeline, so they don’t know that. I’ve given people
my age every once in a while, and it’s always a lie. I’ve kept really good
track of how long I’ve truly been around. At the moment, it’s been 24,425
years, across an ungodly number of timelines. Most of the timelines have
been about the same. It’s not like I go back and make a bunch of changes to
history. I just wanna see it all, and I need time to do that.
Anyway, I’ve just stepped into a time chamber in 2300, and ended up back in
2256, because not everyone has the luxury of reversing their timelines. I
have to save a very important man’s life, and I’m going to do it in a
different way than anyone knows. I’m standing at the bottom of the cliff,
back pressed against it. Mateo Matic is dying a couple meters from me, but I
can’t help him quite yet. His murderer is still watching him, not to make
sure Mateo dies, but because he isn’t a natural-born killer, and he’s
freaking out about what he just did. I’ve seen this moment a few times, so I
know exactly what happens. Four, three, two, now.
I dive down to Mateo. I don’t have long before he expires, and it’s too
late. Briar killed him while wearing a special temporal object called the
hundemarke, which means that this moment absolutely cannot be changed. If I
don’t do this right, I won’t be able to go back and try again. This is it. I
place my hands on his head, and concentrate. He coughs blood onto me. Man, I
really wish I had more time. I have never tried this before, but I know I
can do it. If I can do it to myself, I can do it to someone else. I close my
eyes, and breathe deeply. I’m almost there. He’s in a vulnerable position,
which is actually good, because it makes it easier for me to enter his mind.
Just a few more seconds. There. I grab his consciousness from his brain,
compress it, and teleport it all into my own brain.
Before anyone can come down to retrieve Mateo’s now completely dead body, I
activate the recoil protocol, and jump back into the future. Trinity and
Abigail are standing there, waiting for me, but they both look older. They
look much older. I grit my teeth, and stare at them. “How long has it been?”
“Eleven years.”
I tap on my tablet, trying to figure out what went wrong. I should have only
been gone a few seconds, just like Trinity when she went back in time to
reyoungify herself. “Are you joking with me, err...?”
“No, you have been gone eleven years.”
“Why are you in this room right now?” I ask them. “How did you know I would
finally return today?”
“A little bird told us,” Abigail answered.
I watch her a moment. “Do you mean that literally...?”
“Yes,” Abigail began, “a flying creature came to us, and told us to come
back here on this date, because you would be returning. They flew off before
we could find out who they were, or how they knew it. We chose to take their
advice, and it looks like they were right.”
I look back at my tablet. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“It could be sabotage,” Trinity offered, “or a malfunction. The point is
you’re here, and I assume you have the crown.”
I growl, and take the device out of my bag. It’s little more than a
paperweight with pretty lights around it. I claimed that it can absorb
someone’s consciousness, and store it, and that it’s what I’m using to save
Mateo. Again, I don’t know for sure why I lie about my powers; it just makes
sense to me. “I do. I was successful, but...”
Trinity peers at me. “But what?”
“The clone body is in its fifties now. That’s way too old. When he goes back
to his friends in 2258, they will see that he’s aged, and our lie won’t
work. We’re supposed to make them think someone rescued him with an
extraction mirror.”
“I don’t understand that,” Abigail said. “Why didn’t you just use an
extraction mirror? It sounds easier.”
“Mateo’s death cannot be undone. An extraction mirror would allow us to take
him out of the moment he died, nurse him back to health, then put him back
into his old life. He would one day have to go back through the mirror, and
experience his death, which we don’t want him to have to do. But that’s not
the biggest problem.”
“His body cannot be saved,” Trinity answered before Abigail could press it.
“Your father performed the autopsy, and I got a second and third opinion.
Once Briar pushed him off that cliff, it was over. Not even the extraction
mirror could save him from that. We tried to use it before he was pushed,
but the hundemarke blocked us. The clone body is our only hope.”
“Except it’s not anymore,” I complain. “We let it grow too long. I’m too
late.”
“How long will the crown house his consciousness?”
“What?” I question.
“How long?” Trinity presses.
“Forever, I guess, until the parts degrade.”
“So, twenty-nine years should be a piece of cake.”
“You’re growing another clone?” Now who’s keeping secrets?
“The bird came to us the day you left,” Abigail explains. She walks over and
presents me with a second tank, right next to the other one. “We started
Plan B immediately.”
I smile. “I’m glad you two are here to sweep my mistakes away.”
“It might have been necessary,” Trinity says to me. “Tamerlane examined the
first clone for us. I don’t think it would have worked.
“Why not?”
“He thinks he screwed up the sequence,” Abigail answers instead. “The first
clone wouldn’t be on Mateo’s original pattern. It would have just been a
normal guy.” Mateo Matic is a salmon time traveler. He only lives one day
every year. At the end of that day, he jumps forward in time, and this
aspect of him is critical to our plan.
I nod. “Someone from the future is pulling strings. That’s who the bird
was.”
“Yeah,” Trinity says. “It’s possible. I’ve seen it done, just not with
birds.”
“No one else is supposed to know we’re doing this,” I preach to the choir,
“or how we’re doing it.”
“I know,” Trinity agrees. “Perhaps that’s being a little too optimistic,
though. I want you to check that crown, and make sure he’s in there. Keep
checking it for the next three decades, until we can finally finish this
mission. We’ll need time to work out the kinks in the time chamber anyway.”
That’s a long time to keep a second consciousness dormant in my head, but I
think I can swing it.
Twenty-nine years later, it’s finally time to complete this mission. The
second Clone!Mateo has aged in his growing tank enough to return to his time
period, and make everyone think it was due to an extraction mirror. We could
have increased the speed of development using any number of techniques,
including time travel itself, but that’s problematic for the endgame. In
order to force this clone to experience time in the same way the original
Mateo did, it was best to let it grow at a normal rate beforehand. Of
course, when it comes to time travel, it doesn’t really matter anyway. When
I insert his consciousness into the new body, and send him back in time, it
will be the same 2258 as it would have been had we tried it twenty-nine
years ago.
Speaking of Mateo’s consciousness, I can still feel it rattling around in my
brain. It’s not awake, and he will hopefully never know he was ever in
there, but as far as I can tell, he’s completely intact, and ready for his
new life. Mateo 2.0. I’ll have to call upon my acting skills to convince him
of the lie, so he can convince everyone else without having to lie himself.
There’s a chance it’s pointless. If the truth ever, ever comes out, everyone
will always have known. Because time travel.
I tell the others that it’s best if I do this alone. When he wakes up, Mateo
is going to have to interact with someone, but there’s no need for him to
know too much about the future, or who else is involved. They have plenty of
things to do on their own, so they don’t argue with me about it. I place the
clone body on the bed, and inject a sedative, so he doesn’t wake up while
I’m still in the room. Right now, the body doesn’t have a consciousness, but
it still possesses its autonomic functions, like breathing, and pumping
blood. As for the brain, it only has one thought. I implanted a memory in
there, which will remain even after I teleport Mateo’s mind into it. Like I
said, I have to make him think that he was rescued with the extraction
mirror. So he should have a vague recollection of that happening. He’s going
to remember time slowing down as he was dying, and being dragged from his
place of death, and pulled through the mirror. The memory doesn’t have to be
perfect, or detailed. After all, when you’re dying, your ability to make
accurate observations about the world is limited.
After I’m finished reversing the consciousness teleportation process from
forty years ago, I check his vitals, and wrap him in bandages, to make him
think he simply received medical treatment, even though his body is fine. We
talked about giving him a pain inducer, so the idea that he has to recover
from his injuries is believable, but decide against it. He’s going to think
a man named Dr. Baxter Sarka treated him, and being from even deeper into
the future, Sarka has access to untold resources. Mateo’s going to be
perfectly accepting of the idea that it’s possible to remove someone’s pain
without leaving them with side effects usually experienced from narcotics.
He awakens a few hours later, and falls out of bed. I’m right. “Baxter!” he
calls. “Are you still here?”
I calmly but quickly walk back into the room. “Hey Thistle. Set the lights
to twenty-four percent, please.” The lights turn up, but not too brightly.
“Report,” Mateo says after he’s certain that he recognizes me.
“I’m sorry to tell you that you died,” I answer professionally. “We used an
extraction mirror to bring you back to life, if only temporarily.”
“Do you know how I died?” he asks.
“Yes. Do you?”
“I remember everything. I’m just worried about saying something that messes
up the timeline. Where’s Briar?”
“He died long ago.” This was either a lie, or true. I don’t actually know
what happened to him. A few of our friends took a ship to some unknown
location, and Briar went with them as a prisoner. We’ve not heard from any
of them since. Briar ages strangely, so he could still be alive, but it’s
not guaranteed, and I don’t want Mateo thinking he has any hope of going
after him. I don’t want any more violence.
“What year is it?”
“That I cannot tell you.”
He understands. “What can you tell me?”
“Only that we’re returning you back to your life. It’ll be 2258, after your
memorial.”
“I appreciate it. I think it would be weird to attend my own funeral.” He
switches gears. “Is Sarka still here?”
“He had to go to another appointment.”
“Thank him for me, if you get the chance.”
“Will do.” I pause a moment. He lies back down to work off the sedative.
“Are you okay, emotionally speaking? I can’t imagine what it’s like to
survive your own death.”
“I’m all right. I’m grateful to you, and him, and anyone else involved, who
I presume I shouldn’t know about, at least not right now.”
“Do you want a hug?”
“Please.”
After the hug, I remove a syringe from my bag, and place it on his
nightstand. “You’ll need thirty more minutes to recover, so don’t take this
yet. Once you do, it’ll give you enough energy to stay awake for about
twelve Earthan hours. Take it just before you leave, so you can reunite with
your friends without falling asleep on them. When it wears off,
though, you will fall asleep, and you’ll stay that way for almost a whole
day. Just go to bed, and let it happen.”
“Got it. What can I tell them? More to the point, what can I say to the
younger version of you?”
“Tell them someone extracted you, but you don’t know who. You don’t have to
worry about telling Past!Me anything. I never saw you back then. You must
sneak past me, or I erase my own memories, I don’t know.”
An hour later, Mateo injects himself with the stimulant, and just hangs out
in his recovery room until the crash. He doesn’t explain why he does this,
but when he reawakens, I usher him down the hallway, and into the time
chamber, so he can go back to where he belongs. It’s true that the past
version of me never saw him alive after his death. I think he slips into
their spaceship while I’m not looking, and doesn’t come out before it leaves
for a new destination. At some point later, he’ll actually go back in time,
to a very distant planet called Dardius, so he can attend his own real
memorial service in person. Thousands of people are, were, and will be there
with him, including me, Trinity, and Abby, while billions more watch on
television. Then it’s time for us to go back to work.
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