“Welcome back, Doctor,” Zachariah said as Bradigan and Valeria exited the Hermes chamber. “Don’t worry, it’s still 2025.”
Bradigan eyed him, dread creeping onto his face. “Tell me you’re joking, right now.”
“I am. It’s 2019, just like you left it.”
Valeria laughed as Bradigan slumped back against the wall of the chamber. “Please don’t do that to me again.”
“Apologies, Doctor,” he said, smiling. “I just couldn’t resist.” He turned to Valeria. “I take it nothing catastrophic happened on your trip.”
She glanced around the room before waving to Missy, Ben and Cruz in the control room. “I guess not, everything seems to be just where we left it.” She relaxed her shoulders, seemingly relieved, and began taking her shoes off. “But I’d better go check out my bed, just to be sure.”
Zachariah glanced at his watch. “It’s only just after two o’clock, Miss Davis.”
Valeria checked her watch, 11.34. “This has to be the strangest jet lag I’ve ever experienced.”
Zachariah perked up. “Oh, that’s significant,” he said. “We’ll have to adjust our scheduling to compensate for the time discrepancy. You and Dr. Bradigan are now almost five hours older than the rest of us.”
Valeria pointed at him as she walked backward toward the door. “You better check your phrasing on that, Doc.”
He laughed. “Yes, of course.”
Bradigan and Zachariah looked on as Valeria passed through the open doorway and vanished as if she’d never really been there. Pip, who was walking just behind her, stopped abruptly at the threshold, eyes wide in disbelief. Bradigan ran for the door and took Pip’s arm, pulling her back, causing her to drop her tablet, and put himself between her and the doorway.
“Doctor!” Zachariah shouted behind him, pointing to the now cracked tablet.
Bradigan saw it disappear just like Valeria and, before he could react, he felt a force upon him unlike anything he’d felt before. He instinctively closed his eyes; something seemed to be pulling at him and stretching his legs, like his body had been magnetized, and then he heard Valeria’s voice.
“Back off!”
Bradigan opened his eyes and saw a warped image of Valeria fighting off two uniformed men and, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he stepped forward. Aiming for the closest man, he put his weight into a charge and shoved him into a wall. As Bradigan regained his balance, Valeria delivered her knee into the other man’s gut and together they turned to retreat, but the only thing waiting behind them was a wall.
“Stand down!” a deep voice echoed across the room and their assailants backed off but kept them surrounded.
“What’s going on here?” Valeria demanded. “Who are you people?”
As she still spoke, the circle around them parted and an official looking man stepped through into the ring. He wore an impeccably clean and pressed uniform modestly decorated with medals and ribbons showing his status. He was an older gentleman, not as old as Zachariah but easily older than Missy, with dark gray hair and a full beard. His face was stern and he wore an eye patch over his right eye.
“Valeria Davis and Dr. Daniel Bradigan,” he said. “Welcome to the A.S. Guard.”
“How do you know our names?” Valeria asked.
“I am Commander Hoban of the A.S.R., the Altered Space-Time Response. And you,” he narrowed his eyes at her, “are unauthorized time travelers.”
Valeria laughed. “Time travel?” she said, downplaying the accusation. “You can’t be serious.”
“Miss Davis, don’t waste my time. Captain Vidal, please.” One of the soldiers nodded and held up a hand, the others withdrew and returned to their normal duties. “You see,” Hoban continued, “this station was created to monitor the timeline for abnormalities, and reverse them without bias.”
With the soldiers gone, Bradigan was able to see the room they had been brought to. The fight had taken place on a round pad located off center in a recessed area of a circular room. Across from them, behind twin consoles, sat two technicians with their eyes on monitors to the left, right and above the pad. Behind them was a single chair, most likely belonging to Commander Hoban, and other technicians worked at stations on the periphery of the room, a step up and behind a rail. The room itself was minimally decorated with a very clean, military aesthetic, likely designed for reliability over flash; the only spots of color were on emblems that looked like heraldic crests lining the wall and meeting up with a large scrawl of a symbol that, Bradigan assumed, must be the A.S.R. logo. “Are you from the future?” he asked.
“In a sense, but not literally,” Hoban answered. “From our point of view, this station was put into operation in the year 3660 and it is now 3667.”
“However?” Valeria guessed.
He grinned. “However, the civilization that launched this station existed long before the one you know.”
“So you’re from some ancient, hyper-advanced civilization we’ve never heard of?” Bradigan asked.
“Precisely.” He waved to an attendant who delivered to him a tablet. He examined it, saying, “Based on your measure of time, this station launched on March 17, 1,896,237 b.c.”
”And you expect us to believe that?” Valeria asked.
“To put it simply, yes. From this station we’ve seen the inhabitants of Earth build themselves up and tear themselves down in an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth. You’re from the twenty-third cycle of human civilization.”
“The twenty-third?” Bradigan asked, stunned. “If what you’re saying is true, it would upend everything we know about human history.”
“I assure you, Doctor, it’s true.”
“I’m going to need more evidence,” Valeria pressed.
“Of course.” Hoban turned to the pair of officers working the consoles behind him. Singling one of them out he said, “Lieutenant Hughes, please bring up Miss Davis’s timeline.”
“Yes sir.”
The monitors surrounding the pad rapidly changed to display the relevant data, video of cities and statistics.
“Muñez,” Hoban spoke to the other, “display any references to Heliarc Enterprises.”
Valeria stepped off the pad, Bradigan behind her, and watched as news headlines and online posts appeared on the screen. “What is this?” she said. Many headlines asked what happened to her, and many more reported on the downfall of her company.
“You see, as long as you’ve been on this station, you’ve been out of your timeline. Over a decade has passed since you and Doctor Bradigan were on Earth.”
Valeria intently read the articles, the company she’d built from nothing was gone in what seemed like mere moments. As she scanned through the text she recognized names, her PR Manager, her Vice President and others, struggling to appease the shareholders until everything finally fell apart.
“Sir,” Hughes spoke up. “In the current timeline, the twenty-third cycle ends in 2038.”
Hoban’s interest was piqued. “Cause?”
“Checking . . . Massive temporal destabilization,” Hughes reported. “Doctor Zachariah’s attempts to retrieve Miss Davis resulted in violent temporal distortions and widespread reality tears across the planet.”
The first thing Valeria felt as she watched the events unfold on the monitors was terror, then grief, then rage, and she lashed out at Hoban. “What have you done!” she shouted, striking him in the jaw and sending him to the floor.
“Restrain her!” Hoban shouted, as Muñez helped him to his feet. Captain Vidal and another had already jumped into action and caught Valeria’s arms. Nursing his jaw, he spoke, “You should know already, Miss Davis. When we return you home, the timeline you’ve just seen will cease to exist.”
“He’s right, Valeria,” Bradigan said, putting his hand on her shoulder as the guards backed off.
She turned to look at Bradigan, then back to Hoban. “I’m . . . sorry,” she said. “Just . . . the idea of losing everything so suddenly . . .”
Hoban sighed. “I understand,” he said. “When the people of our time discovered time travel, and the reality of the cycle of civilization, we took it upon ourselves to ensure that the cycle would end with us.” He stared at the monitors, now showing a barren Earth. He pointed at the screen and said, “Through our research, we surmised that the errant use of time travel was the culprit of the majority of world-ending events in the previous cycles. When our findings were made public, many nations came together under that cause. They each provided in their own ways through science, technology, raw materials, engineering, food and personnel.” Hoban put his right hand on the railing that surrounded the recessed area where they stood and began walking along it, sliding his hand delicately along the metal surface. “It took a long time, but this Station, the Altered Space-Time Guard was completed; a totally self-sufficient outpost with the ability to support her personnel and their families for generations, and the highest technology of the seventh cycle, allowing this station to operate outside the normal flow of time.” He paused and Bradigan noticed a sad look on his face as his shoulders drooped. “But there was no time for celebration.”
“What happened?” Bradigan asked.
“There were terrorist cells on earth at the time who violently protested the A.S.R. program, whether out of fear or greed I can’t say, but the launch of this station ended the seventh cycle when those groups, who felt they had nothing to lose anymore, attacked in force. The resulting war devastated the planet, making it nearly uninhabitable for centuries, and the memory of our service here was lost to time. Stories were passed down by survivors, yes; but they became mere mythology. We have become their gods.”
“I’m sorry,” Valeria said.
“Even here, a member of one of the terrorist factions who calls himself Locke, infiltrated the upper ranks of our program, second only to myself and Major Thorne, and attempted to destroy this station from within.” Hoban gazed off, presumably in the direction of the brig. “He’s been locked up ever since, spouting the same propaganda those terrorists ingrain in all their human weapons.”
Bradigan shuddered at the thought. “Why not go back and warn your people?” he asked.
Hoban blinked and stood up straight, arms behind his back, and showing all the pride and discipline of a man in his position as he walked back toward them. “Because that’s not our directive. We exist to stop the tampering of the timeline, not to swing it in one way or another. Our people believed humanity should grow naturally, and anyone contrary to that has no place in this organization.”
“Then we share the same goal.” Valeria declared. “Our intentions have been, and will always be, simple research. We only want a deeper understanding of human history.”
Commander Hoban looked sharply into her eyes, gauging her sincerity with his gaze. After a while, he finally spoke, “Maybe . . .” He stood up straight again and began pacing back and forth before them. “We’ve been watching you, using our technology to investigate you and your compound undetected; in fact, Captain Vidal was present in your lab when you two traveled back to your 1939. Honestly, we didn’t think we’d have to get involved, your technology as a whole is still over a hundred years off from the earliest recorded successful time travel event from previous cycles, but your Dr. Zachariah is a brilliant man, far ahead of his time.”
Valeria smiled. “He’d be honored to hear you say that.”
Hoban returned the smile before turning to Captain Vidal. “What do you think, Captain? Based on your reconnaissance, could we entrust them with our mission?”
Bradigan blinked. “What do you mean?”
Vidal nodded to his commanding officer and stepped forward. “It’s possible, sir,” he said. “During my time there, I felt no malicious intent, nothing that would make me not trust their word.”
“Then it’s settled,” Commander Hoban declared. “See that they have access to our historical records while they’re on the station.”
“Yes sir.”
“Wait, why are you doing this?” Valeria asked.
“Remember when I said the people of my time strove to end the destructive cycle? With your help, maybe we can end it here, in cycle twenty-three.”
Writer by Grace 