Story #4 - Stealing Time

Stealing Time

The piercing cry of a Roc cut the air, scattering the group below as they ran for cover.

From their clothes it was obvious the five fleeing had no business being outside let alone high on a mountain slope, and it was just as obvious at least one was going to be too slow.

Four ran in sneakers and managed to find shelter under a jagged grey outcropping, but the fifth was barefoot and stopped every few feet to cry out in pain as the razor shale drove into his soles.
Paulie Jones had a Ph.D in temporal physics, six years under his belt as a Time Bender and a fairly decent idea of how to handle himself in a crisis, but watching the Roc’s beak snip Tal’s head from his body just about put him over the edge.

None of this made any sense; the Lab had been here an hour ago. He’d been working on a side project, one the director encouraged so long as he didn’t know too much about the specifics.

Then…Paulie frowned. Everything had gone – fuzzy was the only word for it, and he’d found himself here, surrounded by four of his colleagues who were just as terrified as he was but did a worse job of hiding it.

“Run!” He bellowed, pointing in the direction of a nearby rough stone opening. It wasn’t big enough to be a cave, but should hold them all.

They didn’t have much time; most of Tal’s body was gone now, and the Roc had begun to raise its head every few seconds to make sure it knew where they were.

Fortunately, those left alive were good at following orders and he managed to herd them to relative safety before the Roc had finished the last of its meal. There was a squawk of rage followed by several slow and circling wing beats and the bird finally flew off, leaving only the young lab tech’s bare feet and ankles behind.

Paulie had seen enough in his run to the hole; they were definitely in the right place, but what should be here simply wasn’t.

The Shield must have failed – that was the only explanation – but that was just slightly less improbable than a total reversal of physical laws.

***

An hour later they were cold and hungry but no closer to generating any reasonable idea about what had happened.

“It just isn’t possible!” Simon Ren seemed incapable of saying anything else, and despite his growing irritation with the little man, Paulie couldn’t help but agree.

“Possible or not, Simon, we’re here,” Paulie tried to keep his voice low and soothing but his patience was running out. They were all well-trained, highly educated individuals; why could none of them provide even a decent guess at an explanation?

“But we shouldn’t be here,” Kristy Kline chimed in. She was bright, but had remained largely mute during the discussion. “At least, not like this!”

Ben Draver had only mumbled incoherently from a corner for the last half an hour, back jammed up against a rock face and head in his hands. Paulie could only catch words like “failed” and “temporal”.

The Shield had been designed with a singular purpose in mind; to protect the Lab from temporal interference. It had been coordinated with the deployment of Time Craft in order to both protect the project and ensure that any mistakes made could be corrected. The Shield had barely come into being; at the time of its construction ExoMel was in short supply, but once it was completed the Lab techs began their work in earnest.

Paradox had been subverted. The Shield had breached the conundrum paradigm and temporal energy that should have crushed it under an alternate timeline only strengthened the barrier. The first few years of Bending had been difficult, to say the least, and the Shield had saved them any number of times.

He wished Jess were here. She’d been his lab assistant for the better part of five years, and some of his best ideas came from her. Jess was the last person he’d seen in the Lab before…this.

Paulie smacked his head hard against the rock wall hoping to jar loose an idea. An hour ago, the feeling of being frustrated by an idea was the worst he’d felt in a long time; the project just hadn’t been coming together as he envisioned. Now, a lack of bright ideas might just mean all of their lives were forfeit.

He’d finally had it, too, when he called Jess in from the other room. She’d been happy to search for another can of ExoMel for him so he could finish what he’d started.

“There’s none here,” she’d said, looking up from the storage cabinet, “I’ll pop back and get some.”

Back.

Why had she said that?

Pop back.

Oh no.

Shit.

This was his fault.

***

They’d made it down out of the mountains after a week, surviving on roots, berries and desperate energy, and he’d brow beaten the others into creating a makeshift camp on the edge of a small stream as night came on. Once they were out collecting firewood and food for the long night ahead he wandered down to the stream’s edge and sat, chin in his hands.

The Shield functioned by absorbing temporal energy that came from outside its physical space and then redirecting it to increase overall power output, but it had never been intended to deal with time fluctuations from within.

Jess had done what they all did; pop back to another place and time and take what they needed. Not much, not often – it helped the cause and couldn’t affect the Lab directly.

But he’d asked for something only the Lab had, on hand and in space. She’d done it at his request.

The Shield had a loophole; physical space and bent time, and he’d found it, exploited it by accident.

He’d quite literally stolen time.

- D