Out of Time by Ryan Matthew Harker (ebooks online reader txt) 📕

“It was the Curator’s,” she tells me. “A long time ago he told me that someday Ras would come for him and if that were to happen this book would be very important. I went back to the Cocoon and got it from his house before I came to get you.”

I flip through the books pages. It’s a journal of some kind. Small, tight hand written notes fill every square inch of the yellowed paper. Scant glances of the notes instantly fascinate me. I wish I have more time to actually read them as the book seems to cover the Curator’s long, long life. I continue flipping through the pages and stumble upon one that reads ‘The Chronicler’ in bold letters at the top. I hastily scroll down the page until, BINGO, there’s a reference to a door code with a string of numbers following it. I punch the code into the keypad, 1497566845217, and the door instantly creaks loudly. With a whoosh, and a discharge of steam it retreats inward, past the inside edge of the brick, and slides to the left on iron tracks. The room beyond is dark.

Sammi and I exchange glances. I arch an eyebrow at her and she smiles at me. This is it, a new beginning, or perhaps the beginning of the end? Guns raised and ready with the one hand, our other two clasped, fingers entwined, we enter the Chronicler’s darkened chamber.

One step over the threshold is all it takes for the lights to come on. As soon as our feet pass it the entire room is lit with a searing light. Relinquishing my grip on Sammis hand I lift my arm to shield my arm against the illumination. Sammi does the same. The light doesn’t remain blinding for long though, quickly fading to a normal ambience, revealing a large computer sitting in the center of an even larger room.

“The Chronicler?” I ask.

“The Chronicler,” Sammi answers.

We move towards the Chronicler. We’re within six feet of it when maniacal laughter begins echoing throughout the chamber, bouncing around the room in tumultuous waves. “Yes, Galileo, the Chronicler!” a voice pierces through the waves of laughter.

“Ras!” I growl.

I drop to a crouch, back to the Chronicler, aiming the AR all about the room and into the air. Sammi’s right beside me, her own weapon at the ready. At first there’s no one there, the room’s vacant of anyone but us. Then shimmering vibrations begin to appear all around us, lining the walls to every side with a sparkling luminescence. Out of the simmering vague humanoid outlines take shape, grow more solid until distinct persons manifest.

“Oh no, Zenociders!” Sammi exclaims in dismay.

They surround us completely, hands raised, fingers extended. I should have expected this. What was I thinking, that Ras would just let us waltz right in and disable the Chronicler, effectively dismantling his entire army in one fell swoop? I should have known better.

Clapping erupts from the doorway Sammi and I have just come through. I aim the AR in that direction and Ras steps through in all his evil glory. His red uniform is neatly pressed, star cufflinks glitter on his sleeves, the medals on his right breast pocket gleam with a polished shine that matches his black boots, and his yellow eyes, framed by his long black locks, glow from under the brim of his black hat.

“Bravo!” Ras compliments. “It’s a mystery how you’ve managed to get this far, Galileo, but manage you have.” He stares for a brief moment at Sammi. “And with such a pretty young companion too. She must be the reason you made it out of the Cryo-Dreamer. If I’d known what a thorn she would turn out to be, I would have plucked her from life when I took you from her side in the sewers. And how did you enjoy your short slumber in virtual reality, by the way?”

“You’re a villain!” I shout at Ras. “A vile madman and I’m going to stop you!”

“Ah, so you didn’t enjoy the truths of the Cryo-Dreamer. A pity,” Ras shakes his head sadly. “I would have hoped you’d at least taken its lessons with you after being woken.”

“You don’t know anything about truth, Ras!” I spit.

Ras smiles a venomous half smile, “No, perhaps you are right. But you, you, on the other hand know the truth all too well. You know that this, Wolfman, and his kind are speaking the truth when they say you shall be the ultimate destruction of all Mankind!”

“No!” my denial is vehement. “I won’t except that! I can’t except that! There is no certainty in the future, especially when our reality is made of Infinity, when the possibilities are endless. There’s no way I believe them, and I surely don’t believe YOU!”

“So be it,” Ras agreement is casual. “Believe what you will, you’ll die either way.” He lifts his hand and makes a dismissive gesture.

The Zenociders begin closing in on us.

“Davey,” Sammi begins, panic laden voice sounding near tears as she edges closer to me. “Do something, please!”

There’s only one thing I can do, although it means leaving this reality for another, at least temporarily. “Khronos, Travel!” I shout. The familiar, mechanical male voice tinkles from within my trench, “Yes, Davey.”

I grab Sammi close to me. God, I hope this works. This is the first time I’ve tried making the jump with another person. I feel the stretch and anticipate the snap. The last thing I hear before it comes is Ras screaming his frustration, “Noooo!”

“Don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.”

Sammi clutches tight to my side. At some point before we Traveled I had thrown my right arm over her shoulders. I still have it there, holding her tightly.

“Where are we?” she whispers in my ear. She doesn’t seem to be afraid, only in awe of what’s just occurred.

“Same place,” I tell her. “Different time, different reality.”

“Wow,” she says.

“Khronos.”

“Yes, Davey?”

“When are we?”

“November, 19th 3023.”

“How many realities did we sideslip through?”

“None, Davey.”

“What?” It’s somewhat astonishing to hear this. “What do you mean, none?”

“I did not feel that it was prudent to leave the dimensional congruity we have been in.”

“You didn’t ‘feel’ it was prudent?”

“No, Davey. I only thought that we would be returning to this reality anyway, so why leave it.”

It never occurred to me that a SEAID may be capable of emotion, or even of thought independent in nature. In all the time I spent with TRU she displayed a remarkable range of personality but she never chose to interact with myself, or any of the situations we experienced, unless I first initiated those interactions.

“How did you come to this conclusion?” I ask the SEAID.

“I only noted the course of your actions throughout certain key intervals, analyzing their corresponding relationship with what you repeatedly stated was the goal by which you wished to measure the successful completion of our mission. From there it was easy to deduce what the most prudent action would be to any given situation we might find ourselves in.”

Fascinating. Khronos is displaying, not only a remarkable ability for logical deduction but also an obviously profound aptitude for interacting within circumstance beyond anything I’d ever seen TRU do. Just what have I created by building him?

“Um, well, thank you,” is all I can think to say to him.

“You’re quite welcome, Davey.” He sounds delighted.

Delight, now this could be something programmable, I suppose, or something learned. I know that TRU was capable of displaying emotional responses, but only when interacted with, never independent of those interactions. And, what’s a little weird about this sudden display of behavior from Khronos, is that it’s coming so early in his development. TRU took weeks and multiple jumps before she started to talk. And it was nearly a year of us being together before her responses were anything but mechanical, and then childish. I’d say it was a year and a half before she matured to full adulthood, had really developed a personality all her own. Khronos, on the other hand, has been talking almost from the get go. I’d only made a few jumps before making it to the future of Sammi and Ras and he was talking at a fairly advanced level. Now, after no use for I don’t know how long, where he’d just been, what, along for the ride, listening and observing everything that’s been going on, he’s not only talking like a fully grown adult but possessed of an intelligence and reasoning beyond anything I would ever expect. They say that girls mature faster than boys, maybe it’s the opposite for AI Time traveling devices made by strange extraterrestrials from the future. It could be.

My reverie is broken by Sammi. “Can I move yet?”

“Oh!” I start. “Oh yeah. But we don’t want to move from this area. And we should probably mark this exact spot.”

“I’m hungry,” she looks around wistfully.

“Me too,” I look about equally wistfully, thinking that the meal at the Curator’s must’ve been a long, long time ago. My stomach growls loudly in agreement.

We’re no longer underground. We’re no longer even inside. It never ceases to amaze me how the landscape of our fair Earth is forever shifting throughout the centuries, the terrain in a fluid limbo of which the only constant is man’s desire to shape it to match his desires. There’s nothing all around us. Well, not nothing entirely, per say, there’re plenty of rocks and dirt. How this area went from being a sprawling metropolis in my time, to nothing now, and then transitioned into one of the most advanced and splendid cities I’ve ever seen in a future far, far away. What circumstances must’ve befell the area to transform it from this desert wasteland into that great edifice of human craftsmanship and technological wonder.

“We need to mark this spot. We need to mark it good,” I tell Sammi and begin looking around for anything distinct in this place of sameness.

Sammi catches on to my gambit right off the bat and begins searching as well. Neither of us move our feet from the spot of our landing though and I realize this tactic isn’t going to get us very far. “Stay here,” I tell her and move my search farther abroad.

I keep Sammi in my sight as I search the area for anything to mark our port of entry into this Time. I don’t want to lose it. I have the beginnings of a new plan of attack against Ras formulating but it’s going to require we leave from the exact same spot we arrived.

After a hour of searching I finally come across what I’m looking for, a large scrap of red and white material, with just a touch of blue attached to one corner, with soil covering most of it. It’s almost ironic, considering my earlier musings about change in the world, but I’m fairly certain it’s the faded remnants of Ol’ Glory, the Star Spangled Banner, the flag of the United States of America. It saddens me a bit seeing what was once symbolic of peace and freedom reduced to such a dirty artifact. I pull up the tattered fabric from where it’s half buried in the dirt and stomp my way through dust and gravel back to where I left Sammi.

Although I had to let her get a bit farther away than was my intent, I quickly make it back to her. “Look what I found,” I say, holding the ancient chunk of flag up for her inspection.

She frowns slightly and asks, “What is it?”

“A rag now,” I grin. “It used to be an American flag.”

“What’s that?”

“What? A flag? You have flags in your time, don’t you? I’m sure I must’ve seen one.”

“Of course we have flags,” she laughs. “I mean American. What’s American mean?”

I look around and spot what I’m looking for off to our left. A large stick with which to hang the flag upon, plant firmly in the ground, and mark this spot