Tales of a Tired Daddy

Paradox

“Come here!”

Since the Saurian’s gun was still leveled at me, I couldn’t find any excuse to decline the invitation, but I approached warily, just in case they just wanted to shoot me at close range. Luckily, they held their fire even after I was practically right next to them.

“Now what?” My question fell on deaf ears. They ignored me and pulled a small box the size of a Star Trek communicator from their belt and pressed a large red button with their… I guess their thumb, I suppose. The air began to ripple around us.

“Where are you taking him?” That was me, making the demand from the relative safety of my office. I wasn’t sure how he knew that the Saurian was taking me somewhere when it hadn’t yet occurred to me. The Saurian hadn’t announced anything like that. I suppose he must have seen the air rippling around us and pieced it together before I did, and I found that somewhat disturbing. Was he smarter than me?

The Saurian just ignored him and used their thick, clumsy digits to make some very delicate twisting adjustments to the big red button while precariously allowing the gun to dangle loosely by its trigger. The weapon jiggled dangerously, and I was compelled to offer, “Could I… hold that for you?”

They snarled at me warningly.

I glanced at the gun, still dangling from one… digit? It was going to fire at any moment and there was no telling where the blast would go. I didn’t relish the thought of suddenly finding a hole in me. “…please…?”

They spat at me contemptuously, real spit, too, and continued twisting the button back and forth. From the office, I demanded, “What are you going to do with him?”

I was touched by the concern and was a little worried about it myself, but the Saurian continued to ignore him. They finished the adjustments and put their… thumb? back on the button.

“I’ll tell someone about this!” I threatened from the office. “I’ll tell the police! I’ll tell the Feds! I’ll tell everyone!”

“I’m sure they’ll believe you,” the Saurian muttered and pressed the button.

I guess in hindsight I could have tried to jump the Saurian before they pressed the button, but I didn’t think of it at the time, just like I hadn’t thought about a lot of things that I should have. Like how my duplicate could have been smarter than me even though we shared the exact same thoughts, or why I didn’t see it coming when he threated to call the police. I might have, if given time, but suddenly, space turned inside out and I was utterly alone in my thoughts once more. I’d never felt such utter isolation before. It was devastating! After having shared my mind and my soul with another me for a while, I finally realized the true meaning of being alone with my thoughts. Even the headache of thinking and speaking in stereo didn’t soften the blow of losing that other mind. That other experience. Or that other perspective.

Then, space unfolded and I was hit with excruciating agony.

I fell to my knees. It felt like my head was going to explode, and no matter how hard I pressed on my skull, it felt like my brain was going to burst out of it. And behind that agony, there was sorrow. Misery like I’d never felt before. Loss. Outrage. Bitterness. Hurt. Betrayal. Self-loathing. It bore down on me like a hydraulic press, crushing my spirit. It was much worse than any migraine I’d ever had.

“What are you doing?” I heard the Saurian’s demand through a haze of emotions, but I wasn’t in any condition to answer. I think I was gritting my teeth against the pain, but I could barely feel my own body anymore so I wasn’t sure. “Get up!

“Get up now!” But yelling at me louder wasn’t going to get me to obey. Somehow, I mustered enough energy to glance up at them, but I was no longer impressed by the sight of a gun pointed right at my head. I knew they weren’t going to fire. They needed me too much. Besides, the migraine might settle down a little if my head wasn’t there to contain it.

Then, I glimpsed the room just behind them and stared in disbelief. It looked exactly like the Ship’s console room but straight out of a nightmare. The familiar decor was mostly hidden behind a chaotic web of thick black cables, dully glowing optic fiber, blood red string lights, electrical boxes, and many other things that I couldn’t recognize running in all directions while a dull red light originating from the center of that web cast everything in deep shadows. And at the center of that nightmare web was the console itself, torn open like someone had taken a giant church key to it and left the jagged edges. The strands of the technological web all fed into the hole, and even though I had never seen its insides, I could tell that there was something terribly wrong with the parts of the interior left exposed. The red light throbbed from deep within it, and it looked like many of the things that were supposed to be there had been ripped out, replaced by ugly, oblong things that didn’t belong. My heart ached to see it. It looked like it was in agony.

“What have you done?” I poured all my anger into it, but all I could manage was a hoarse whisper. Somehow, I knew that the Saurian had no right to do what it did, even though I didn’t know what that was.

“Get up!” They weren’t in the mood to answer my question no matter how angrily tossed. “I don’t have time for this!”

“Make time!” I didn’t even care that I was in no position to make demands. I was fueled with a rage that I didn’t quite understand, but I knew was fully justified. “What did you do?

“What did you do?” I admit that I lost my temper, but shouting only left my throat raw. The Saurian merely rocked its head from side to side in a gesture that I took as a shrug.

“Like it? It took me hours to dig the plans out of the archives.” They were quite proud of themselves. “It’s a paradox bridge. It warps time, but I adapted it to accommodate my experiment.”

It was an abomination. It shrieked wrongness. It cried out in agony! It -!

…help me…

Yeah. I heard it. Even through the pressure on my brain, I heard that tiny voice begging for help. It sounded exactly like…

Ship?

…who…?

It was timid and frightened and in intense pain, but it sounded exactly like my friend. But it had no idea who I was.

I’m a friend. I had to start somewhere, so it might as well be on good footing. It was hard to think through my own agony, but I did the best I could.

…friend…?

I’d like to be. The pressure was intolerable. I had to hold it back with my hands. If I can.

…help…

Yes! I wasn’t sure how, but I couldn’t let it suffer anymore. How?

…hurts…!

I know. It sounded so much like Ship that I couldn’t let it down. I feel it, too.

…you…?

Long story. And one I didn’t have the energy to get into right then. First things first. How can I help?

…hurts… too much…!

There must be something -? Suddenly, I had a wild idea, something I was sure couldn’t work a second time, but I wasn’t really that bright anyway. Originality was rare in me.

…too… much…!

Give it to me. I figured that if Ship could form a mental bond with me, so could this one, and if Ship could share knowledge, then this one could share its pain. A burden shared sort of thing. It was probably a stupid idea, and doomed to fail, but it was all that I could come up with. Remember, not too big in the originality department.

…too… much…!

I know. I already figured out that I was feeling its pain and not my own. But that was only because it was radiating that agony. I wasn’t really sharing it yet. And that was probably because of the link that Ship had forged in me. I could feel its suffering while the Saurian couldn’t. And this ship was suffering badly. But I can manage it.

…too… much…!

The Saurian shoved me to the floor with its foot, shrieking, “I said, get up!”

It almost severed my connection with the ship. Almost. But our mental bond held, tenuously, while the Saurian, in a hissing fit, kicked me mercilessly around the floor in an attempt to bully me back to my feet. I blocked out what the Saurian was doing and concentrated on our bond, but it felt like I’d walked into the middle of a fist fight with no idea what I’d done to start it. Their kicks mixed with the nuclear reactor melting down in my head, making it hard to concentrate. I almost lost connection but somehow managed to hold onto it like my life depended upon it.

Just give it to me. I kept my mental voice calm and soothing despite the beating I was getting. I can take it.

…too…!

I know. But I’d had migraines before. I could manage them, like I was already managing this one. I don’t think the ship ever had anything like it, so it didn’t know how to deal with it. But it’ll help. Trust me.

…I…!

Please? I couldn’t stand the thought of the ship suffering anymore. I was even willing to take all its pain away if it would help. Stupid, I know, but I wasn’t really thinking it through at the time. Too much on my mind.

…okay…

My head turned inside out, and I saw things that no human should ever witness. And in that moment, I knew that I’d made a horrible mistake.

That was no migraine headache!

Linked

“I don’t know how you found me,” the dinosaurian hissed, pulling out their unusual gun and leveling it at me, “But I won’t allow you to interfere with my experiment!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I still jumped at the sight of a gun aimed right at me. Habit. “What’s that thing for?”

The saurian glanced at their weapon and rocked their head from side to side. Then, in a nonchalant manner said, “I’m going to have to kill you now, of course.”

“What?” They had already tried that only a few hours ago, and I don’t think they remembered how it turned out. “With that? But I thought it could only stun!”

They rocked their head at me, mouth agape. “Are you a moron or something?”

“Ah.” That told me more than I really wanted to know. I threw my hands out in the intergalactic gesture of “Hold your fire!”, and blurted, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on, there! Just hold on! Hold on! Hoooold on!”

I was desperate for something to say, but all I could do was babble. “You could do that, yes, yes, you could, but… but… but… hear me out, now, because I don’t think you want to be too hasty about that! ”

Then, I ran out of things to say. But the saurian hadn’t fired yet, so I was doing something right. If I could just get that gun pointed away from me, I’d feel a lot better.

“Okay… so… so… so… now… now…” I was not having any luck in the old thinking department, and other me wasn’t helping any. I just stood behind the desk watching as I blathered my way through some kind of bluff, and I took a little offense to that, but it wasn’t like he was doing any better in the old thinking department. He was panicking, and that made it even harder to think. Panic in stereo. And I thought single panic was bad! I had to find a way out of that mess and fast!

“Okay, okay…” I was still lost. All I had was babble, so I leaned into it. “Okay, right, so… so… why… why would you want to kill me anyway? That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“It’ll keep you from interfering in my plans,” they growled back. They poked at me with the gun. “But you’re not that stupid, so what are you up to?”

“He’s onto you,” I called from the office.

That wasn’t helping, so I decided not to speak to me anymore and concentrated on not getting killed.

“Okay, okay, fine. Good. That’s… good…” It wasn’t though. It was bad. Very bad. I couldn’t let that happen. “That’s… but you still can’t kill me!”

“Why not?” They weren’t buying what I was selling. I had to think faster. I had to be cleverer. The problem was I couldn’t and wasn’t.

“Why?” I admit it. I resorted to schoolyard debate tactics. I was desperate, and snark was all I had left. “Why? You have to ask why? You’re that smart, and you still have to ask why?”

The dinosaurian wrinkled its snout and emitted a low growl. “What are you talking about?”

“What?” I sounded as surprised as I could. “You haven’t figured it out yet? I’m shocked!”

A low growl issued from its throat again. “I don’t have time for games! Just tell me what you mean!”

I did my utmost to keep the stupid out of my expression and instead look smug. “You really don’t know?”

They growled again, but they didn’t fire, either, so things were still going my way. They looked me up and down and I did my best to stand straight, act confident, and hold its gaze. After a thorough scrutiny, they grumbled, “What are you hiding?”

I let them stew. It was the only thing I could do. I really didn’t have a plan. I had no idea what excuse to make. So, I waited, hoping that they would do the thinking for me. And wouldn’t you know it? After a while, they glanced into the office and said, “Quantum entanglement?”

“Go on…” I tried to sound encouraging, like I knew the answer, even though I had no idea what they were talking about.

“I had not anticipated it.” They dipped their snout low and shook their head. “But it’s obvious now. You two are connected not only chronologically, but on a quantum level. You share a single mind, don’t you?”

“Yep!” I had an idea, and I felt my other self’s rejection of it all the way from the office, but I couldn’t let him stop me. This was my only shot at survival. “And you know what that means!”

“I can’t kill you.” That was what I hoped they would say. The “can’t kill you” part, not that other stuff. I had no idea what quarter entanglement was, but if it kept me alive, then I was all for it. Then, they bobbed their head from side to side and grumbled, “Not unless I want my experiment to die as well!”

I felt my office self’s shock. Yes, I’d taken a tremendous risk, but it paid off. Instead of being grateful that that entanglement thing was keeping us both alive, though, I started sulking in the office, and that was downright ungrateful.

The Saurian glared at me out of one eye, then a quiet rumble issued from deep in its throat. “I might be able to use this to my advantage.”

That wasn’t supposed to happen. “Um… what?”

“Yessss!” Their staccato hiss sounded like a chuckle. “This is perfect! A much better experiment! Much better indeed!”

I couldn’t believe it. Was I really so stupid as to give the bad guy an even better villainous scheme than they had come up with themselves? What kind of sci-fi hero was I? The idiot kind, obviously.

“We don’t know that!” But I was just stalling for time again. I still had no idea what we were talking about. “For all we know, your first plan was much better! Maybe go with that one!”

“Are you serious?” I felt pretty confident making the demand from the relative safety of the office. “You’re helping it now?”

“Stay out of this!” I might have been a little rough on myself, but I was being pretty annoying. Besides, I wasn’t making it any easier to think. “This is between the professionals!”

The Saurian cocked their head quizzically. “Professionals?”

“Aren’t we?” I thought we at least had that in common. Granted, I only started a few hours ago, but technically, there was a version of me that had done it for… oh, I don’t know, I guess for years or something. Long enough, at least, to gain a reputation. But they weren’t in the mood for bonding; they hadn’t even stopped pointing their gun at me, although it wasn’t pointed directly at me, so I counted that as a win.

“We’re nothing alike!” The venom in their tone was shocking. “But you will use your evil genius to correct the colossal wrong you have perpetrated!”

“Colossal -?” That was even more shocking. “What did I do?”

“What did you do?” The Saurian hissed angrily, but there was a catch to its voice as if its feelings were hurt. “What did you do? You destroyed my people! That’s what you did! Billions of my people dead because of you! Billions!”

“Uh…” I didn’t know what to say. I was going to say that all I did was restore my timeline, but I stopped before I could utter a sound. Well, a sound other than, “uh” that is. I hadn’t even stopped to think about it, but the Dinosaurian was right. I never meant to, but in restoring my timeline, I wiped out billions of years of alternate history, and probably trillions of lives, including everyone that the Dinosaurian knew and loved. I didn’t want to believe it, or even think about it, but there it was. They were right. I was a murderer, and there was nothing I could say to make it right.

The Saurian rocked their head back and forth. “But you’re going to help me restore them to life! You’re going to help me, or you’re both going to die!”

Then, it clicked. I know. I’m a little slow on the intake. “That’s what it’s all about? Bringing your timeline back?”

I looked into the office and saw it dawn on my face in there, too. From behind the desk, I drew an indignant breath. “You mixed my timeline with another to see if you could bring your people back?”

“I folded timelines together to see if they would remain stable,” the Saurian corrected. “And so far, it’s been a success. With a little more work, and your help, I should be able to do it on a universal scale.”

I was confused. “How is that going to bring them back?”

They shook their head at me. “Are you trying to annoy me, or are you really that ignorant? If I can fold the timelines together, I can bring my people into this one!”

“Wait!” I pointed at myself in the office to warn me against interrupting again, then turned to the Saurian. “What are you talking about, bringing your people into this timeline?”

The Saurian bobbed their snout up and down. “How else can I save them? You’ve closed off every other choice!”

I was startled in stereo at that, and both of us exclaimed, “What? Me?”

“Don’t play dumb,” the Saurian growled. “You know what you did! But if you think making the extinction event a fixed point in time is going to stop me, then you’re greatly mistaken!”

A fixed point in time? I wasn’t even sure what that was or how I could make one, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. Instead, I figured I would sound too smart for my own good and bluff it out again. “So, instead of changing everything back again -?”

“I’m going to fold both histories together and bring my people here!” They did an excellent job of thinking for me, but I couldn’t exactly congratulate them for it and maintain the bluff, so I kept quiet and hoped that if there was any elaboration to make that they would accommodate that, as well. And they didn’t disappoint. “And then, we will take this world back and restore the empire to its full glory!”

And that’s how the Saurian’s plot went from a mission of mercy to a full-blown invasion in only a few sentences.

Overwhelmed

I sat on the sofa in the main room while I sat at my desk in the office, and she stood in the archway between us, deliberately not looking in the direction of the sofa.

“This is just too weird,” she muttered to herself.

“You’re telling me?” We spoke in chorus, which brought the heels of her hands against her temples. I didn’t blame her. I was getting quite a headache myself.

“Okay, stop it!” She didn’t address either of us but shouted into empty space instead. Her reaction was startling, since she wasn’t really a shouter. She wasn’t in a very good place.

“Sorry.” I wanted so much to rush over and hug her, but I didn’t dare move or else my other self would do the same, and we weren’t supposed to have contact, so I gripped the sofa cushion and the arms of the office chair to restrain myself, while my stereoscopic response made her roar in frustration.

“Right!” She used her decisive voice, which meant she was completely fed up. In long, brisk strides, she stormed to the key bowl next to the hallway door, announcing, “I’m going out for coffee! When I get back, you had better have this all worked out! Get me?”

“Yes, dear!” I cringed a little calling her that after we had just met, but it was already second nature to me after months of living together.

“You don’t get to say that,” she snapped, pointing at me angrily. Confusion momentarily crossed her fine features, and she glanced between the sofa and the office before yanking the door open in a huff and slamming it after her. I wouldn’t have blamed her one bit if she never came back.

“She’s taking things well,” I told myself in stereo. “Considering…”

It was a bit too much for me as well. I wasn’t sure what was real anymore. Was I some guy that woke up one day next to a gorgeous woman that I had no memory of, with a life that was completely different from the one that I knew when I had gone to sleep that night, or was I just some idiot that stumbled into a time/space machine and accidentally became inextricably linked with a matrix of data that could fry my brain if I wasn’t careful? Right at that moment, I was both, and not only that, but both of us were literally thinking with the same mind and feeling with the same heart. We not only reacted and responded the exact same way to things, but we knew intimate details of both lives that we’d previously led separately, and it was all bringing on a massive migraine. But which of us was the real one? Was there even a real one? Or were we both it?

It was a bit too much for me to handle, or even fathom. We were synched in a way that couldn’t have been natural. But could someone have done that to us? And how? Why? And most importantly, what the heck were we going to do about it?

The more sci-fi me had a sudden epiphany, but I decided to put the kibosh on it immediately.

“Don’t,” I warned from the desk.

“Well, you must admit,” I argued with myself, “She’s way out of your league. You thought so yourself!”

“I’ve had plenty of time to work through it!” I wasn’t going to hash it out all over again. I’d been through enough already.

“Oh, yeah. That’s what all the therapy was for. I know!” I peered into the office and looked down at the keyboard to avoid eye contact. It was a mind-bending experience doing it simultaneously like that; I just hoped that it didn’t eventually bend things to the breaking point. “But it’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Leave it alone,” I warned me. I wasn’t going to let the sofa me ruin months of work and I knew his frustration, so I quietly traced the embedded pattern on the sofa’s arm while I stared uselessly at the keyboard, and it still felt weird experiencing both at the same time. But neither of us could let it go for long.

“She’s just a bit too perfect, don’t you think?” I quietly asked from the sofa.

I didn’t like what I was implying. “She isn’t responsible for this!”

“Maybe not,” I pointed out. “But you must admit that she has a pretty high tolerance for weirdness, so why would seeing the two of us like this upset her so easily?”

“Will you listen to yourself?” I looked up from the keyboard to make my point clear. “She only had to deal with mental illness before! Or a concussion, or amnesia, or even a chemical imbalance, I don’t know! But that’s pretty normal stuff! Then, you come along and -!”

“-and it suddenly becomes sci-fi!” It was a good point. “Okay, so bad idea there. Maybe we should look elsewhere?”

I had to think for a moment, so I leaned back, me on the sofa, me in the office chair, and thought. It wasn’t hard to come up with questions, though. But answers?

“Why us?”

The office chair creaked as I leaned forward. “What?”

The sofa cushion crushed audibly as I leaned forward to repeat myself, and to elaborate. “Why us? Why are we affected by this, and no one else?”

I shook my head. “Are we certain that we’re the only ones affected?”

“Good point.” I had to concede that. “So, you’re by the computer. Can you look and see if anyone else has reported exact doubles of themselves recently?”

I scowled pensively. “Do you think that’s something someone is going to report, though?”

I shifted forward on the sofa and spread my hands in the intergalactic gesture of “How the hell should I know?” I rolled my eyes irritably but brought up the browser and typed in the keywords anyway. The search was flooded with doppelganger hits, but even glancing at them, I could tell that the stories were either too old or they were complete rubbish.

“Call one up anyway,” I suggested from the sofa. “Pick a promising one!”

Irritated at myself for thinking that I was an idiot, I did it anyway, and the one I found was nothing like my situation. Our situation, that is. Nothing about exact same thoughts and reactions, just evil look-alikes.

“I don’t think I’m the evil one,” I called from the sofa. “Are you?”

“Doubt it,” I muttered and closed the session. “Any other bright ideas?”

“No,” I muttered and dropped back into the sofa. “But I did notice that we’re not in perfect synch anymore.”

I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed that already. “What do you think it means?”

“Maybe too early to tell.” I was talking out of my ass as usual. A short hop to the past to stop an extinction level event didn’t make me an expert on anything, so I didn’t even try to pretend. “But I think we can agree that ours is a unique situation?”

“Which means, we’re the target of something.” I was amazingly astute. It was quite shocking, really. “Do you have any enemies that would…?”

I was insulted. “Why me? Just because I’m the one from the time machine?”

I spread my hands in the international gesture of, “Obviously, yes!”

“Okay, fine,” I conceded. “But your situation is hardly normal, either! I mean, who wakes up in a completely different -!”

A sudden thought struck, stopping me in mid-sentence. My stomach churned a little. I felt it at the desk, too. We both knew what was wrong, or at least, strongly suspected it.

“This is your fault!”

I shot up from the sofa. “How was I supposed to know? I’m an idiot, remember?”

I rolled my head irritably. “You broke time!”

“I tried to repair it!” My protest sounded hollow, even to my own ears. I was ignorant of time, space, and the repercussions of messing with them. Who knew that in putting an extinction level event back in place to restore the normal timeline, I might have inadvertently created another crisis?

No! That couldn’t be it! I fixed things! Didn’t I? I began pacing the front room. “No. Wait! We don’t know that! We don’t know anything for sure! We need to focus a bit! We need to think this through!”

“We need your friends,” I pointed out from the desk. “We need them to think for us!”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know how to reach them, now, do I?” Okay, that was a little too peevish, but I couldn’t help it. I’d messed up and was in way over my head. Again! And I didn’t need me reminding myself how useless I was!

“Do you really think she won’t come looking for you?” I had to ask. We really needed her help.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, halting in mid pace. “When we first met, her only thought was getting rid of me, so…”

“I don’t think she’s that petty,” I pointed out. “Not anymore.”

I rolled the idea around for a bit. “Maybe. But I have no idea how she’s going to find me.”

“Come to Earth?” I suggested. “Look around a bit?”

“Funny.” I hadn’t realized before how dry my humor was. No wonder no one ever laughed. “She’s probably got a whole slew of gadgets for that.”

Speaking of gadgets reminded me that I still had one in my pocket. I pulled out the high-tech magic wand with all the little knobbly bits on it and presented it to myself. “Think this might help?”

“I don’t think you should mess with that,” I advised myself. “You don’t know what it might do.”

The thought of suddenly making all of time and space explode the moment I activated the device made me put it back in my pocket. “Good call. Maybe later.”

I shrugged. “Still getting nowhere, though.”

“Yeah.” I had to admit; the situation was much higher over my head than I realized.

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

That wasn’t my voice. It wasn’t hers, or that of the friends I had left behind. It was different. Raspy and slithery, and it ended the sentence with a sharp snap of teeth. I knew that voice, and that snap, but before I could exclaim that it couldn’t be, they just phased into existence right in front of the breakfast bar, the short red and black feathers on their pate ruffled irritably.

“I guess two heads aren’t better than one when it comes to you two!” they sniped peevishly.

Zero Point Emissions

“It’s called a what, now?”

I still didn’t understand what she’d told me despite the entire knowledge of Ship’s memory banks behind me.

“A Zero Room,” Interface dutifully replied, but I could tell that I was annoying her. I’d taken way too many opportunities to demonstrate my ignorance.

“And no time exists in there?” I just wanted clarification. She didn’t have to give me that nasty glare.

“Neither time nor space,” she stiffly corrected.

I peeked through the doorway. “Looks like an empty room to me.”

“Wait until the door is closed,” she dryly replied.

I didn’t want to pursue the argument any further, so I decided to change the subject slightly. “And that’s going to cure me?”

She closed her eyes, politely holding back every highbrow insult brewing inside her. “It cannot cure you, but it might help to mitigate the damage thus far.”

She had already explained the procedures they’d already done to me until she couldn’t take it anymore, so there was no point in rehashing them. Besides, I still wouldn’t get it. Ship was being pretty stingy with the data bank and wasn’t backing me up, and I was actually rather grateful for that. Apparently, even a fraction of that knowledge was enough to fry my brain to mush within seconds, and I didn’t fancy that as the way I wanted to go.

“By cutting me off from Ship?” I was pretty proud of myself for remembering that much.

She didn’t look impressed, but then, I didn’t think anything would, especially where I was concerned.

“By stemming the flow of information, we hope that your brain’s natural healing processes can work without enduring any further stress,” she explained. “That is, if your brain is capable of healing.”

“What do you mean by that?” I tried not to be offended, but she was being so condescending!

“Other species have remarkable healing capabilities,” she replied. “Your species, however, is remarkably unremarkable. That being said, I doubt that the Zero Room will do you any good, but conversely, it cannot do you any harm, either.”

“So, it’s worth a try,” I finished for her.

“It would also keep you out of the way while the capsule finishes repairs.” She was annoyed that I had interrupted her, and I actually felt bad about it. I was too busy trying to be as smart as her and hadn’t considered her feelings.

“And stop you from pushing buttons willy-nilly,” she politely added out of spite.

I prudently let that go and peeked into the room again. “So, what happens once I’m inside?”

“Nothing,” Interface replied.

“Nothing?” I couldn’t tell if she was kidding; she had a pretty good poker face. “What do you mean, nothing? It must do something!”

“Once the door closes, you will be isolated from all time and space.” She was condescending again. “Without time or space, there can be no cause and effect, and without cause and effect, no events may occur.”

That made sense. I think. “So, nothing happens in there?”

“Correct.” She wasn’t impressed that I understood it on the first try.

“Well,” I had to say it; it was too good to resist. “That’s something.”

“Indeed,” she flatly replied. “Now, if you don’t mind?”

She gestured invitingly towards the doorway, showing no indication that she got the joke, and to be honest, I think I was the only one that did. Taking the loss, I shrugged and stepped through the door, but I paused just inside the room to ask her, “How will I know if it’s working?”

“The ship will monitor your vitals,” she explained. “We will know if it has any effect on your condition.”

“Ah.” I took a step farther into the room and had to pause again to ask, “And how long is this going to take?”

“I do not know,” she bluntly replied. “And we shall never know if we never begin, now, shall we?”

Okay, I rolled my eyes at that one and took another step into the room before I had to pause again. “So, what happens when you shut the door?”

“A very good question,” she said, and Ship closed the door on me.

*********

I wasn’t there when it happened, so I imagine their conversation went something like this.

Ship said, “He’s gone!”

And Interface said, “Who?”

And Ship said, “Pilot! He’s vanished!”

And Interface probably said, “Don’t be stupid. He’s in the Zero Room.”

And Ship probably said, “No! He isn’t!”

And she probably said, “Don’t be silly! The Zero Room just does that!”

And Ship probably said, “No! I would know if he was still there, and he’s not there! He vanished the moment the door closed!”

And she probably said something like, “Well, good riddance.”

But I wouldn’t know because I wasn’t there. Instead, I was in an office staring at myself sitting at a desk. Or rather, I was sitting at my desk trying to overcome writer’s block when I looked up and saw myself standing in the doorway. But I was just in the Zero Room not even a second ago! And suddenly, there I was, seeing myself standing in the doorway, rising to my feet from behind the desk, in utter shock, and thinking in stereo.

“What’s going on here?” I muttered in unison with my doppelganger. I felt their confusion as if it was my own.

“How’d you do that?” My demand was instantly echoed by them, again in perfect unison. And again, I felt their confusion, as well as their frustration at seeing and hearing someone that looked and sounded exactly like me speaking at the exact same moment that I did, in the same tone, with the same words, and I instantly knew who they were, remembering their life as well as mine, and it just wasn’t right.

“Stop that!” But they didn’t. They were just as annoyed as I was, and growing just as frustrated. “I said stop it! Stop it right now!

“Oh, this is ridiculous!” At least we agreed on that, as if we could disagree. I figured it out right away, and so did they.

“We were just in the Zero Room,” we said in stereo. “Something must have gone wrong!

“Stop copying me!” It was really pissing me off. They could at least have the courtesy to allow me to speak for myself!

“What is going on here?”

I turned around to the sound of her voice and looked past my double. She was standing right behind me and as soon as she saw me, her face paled, but she held it together. She’d kept her composure through months of physicals and therapy to get over my delusion of another life, so something like a doppelganger wasn’t going to derail her, either. But she was shocked and hustled past doorway me to desk me’s side.

“What’s happening?” Her voice was trembling, and when I held her, the rest of her was too. “Who is that? Why does he look and sound like you?”

“He thinks like me, too.” Okay, maybe that was too much information, because her face grew even paler and she glanced fearfully between us. Being a new time traveler, I had a theory, one that other me instantly shared. “I think he’s me, but from another time and place.”

She glanced between us, then asked desk me, “Why is he doing that?”

“Somehow, we share the same mind.” Speaking in unison was getting really old really fast, but I couldn’t think of any way to prevent it. He couldn’t either. But there wasn’t time to figure it out yet, because we’d made her even more uneasy, and we had to make things right again. If that was even possible anymore. “I don’t know how, but I know everything about him, and he knows everything about me. We’re the same person.”

“Okay!” She was finally fed up and decided to take charge before things got weirder. “That’s enough of that! One at a time, starting with you!”

She pointed at me. Doorway me, that is. Even I was getting confused.

“Where did you come from?” It was a fair question. She always knew how to get to the point. “And how soon are you leaving?”

I… doorway me… wasn’t sure what to say, but I knew that she wouldn’t let me beat around the bush, so I told her about the Zero Room and that it was supposed to be therapeutic and topped it off with an apology. “I don’t know what happened or how I got here, but believe me, it was an accident. I never meant to come here…”

“… wherever here is.” I looked around. It was the office of my dreams, and it was almost impossible to sort the memory of putting it together from the memory of Ship and Interface. I saw that my doppelganger was looking around the room with just as much envy, even though it was their workplace. Things were just too weird for words.

“Earth.” I, doorway me, knew it already, but I had to say it to cement it in reality. “The United States. It even looks like my apartment… sort of.”

“It is.” Desk me was getting territorial, and I didn’t blame them. I remembered the morning that I woke up next to her with a completely different set of memories from hers, and now, there was a third reality intruding upon me. Them. Whatever. The point was, it was getting to be too much to take.

“A third reality!” We both exclaimed it the instant it hit us. It was so obvious that I don’t know why I didn’t suspect it sooner.

We spooked her, though. She jumped and demanded, “What was that about?”

“Time or realities are folding over each other!” Okay, we hardly knew what we were talking about, but it sounded good. “I must have jumped from one reality to another! That’s why I didn’t remember my life in this reality!”

My excitement died pretty quickly, though, when I hit the wall of ignorance. “But I don’t know why the Zero Room sent me here. I don’t think it’s supposed to work that way.”

“Wait!” She was pretty apprehensive about my explanation, even given that it was delivered in stereo. She was pretty wary of doorway me altogether and clutched my arm protectively. “What are you saying? That my husband is from another reality, and that all those tests and sessions were for nothing?”

If there was one thing that I loved about her, it was that she always kept an open mind about things. But I didn’t expect it to remain open for very long, given the circumstances. I decided that desk me would put an arm around her while doorway me blathered like an idiot.

“I’m guessing that Ship and Interface have already figured all this out by now and that they’re working on getting me back.” I tried to sound reassuring, but I had no proof that what I said was anywhere near the truth. For all I knew, Interface was happy to get rid of me. It was what she’d wanted from the moment that we met. Ship, on the other hand, might miss me. I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stand to see her in distress. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“It better be soon.” She didn’t mince words, and I didn’t blame her. This thinking and speaking in stereo was getting overwhelming. Then, her brows knit in deep thought and she said, “This isn’t a Time cop thing where you two can’t make contact with each other or you turn into goo and disappear, is it?”

“I don’t know!” The idea shocked us both. We eyed each other carefully, thinking the same thing. “But maybe we’ll just keep our distance, just in case!”

Then again…

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” the doctor said, setting my file down on his desk. “But every result is negative. Toxicology. Radiology. CAT. EKG. X-Ray. Everything negative. No signs of physical trauma that would account for it. As far as I can tell, you’re perfectly healthy.”

I listened, but all I knew was the warmth radiating from the woman seated next to me. Even dressed, she was magnificent. She was so perfect that she didn’t need the makeup that she’d spent minutes applying before departure. And besides being beautiful, she was smart, capable, intelligent, challenging, and entirely outside my league mentally and emotionally. I had no idea why she had ever decided to hitch herself to someone like me. Her aura was both comforting and uncomfortable, a very weird combination.

“That can’t be, Dr. Hamilton,” she said. “There has to be some explanation for the amnesia.”

I decided to keep quiet. There was no reason to repeat the same old argument. Besides, the doctor was well aware of my condition and replied to her better than I ever could.

“As I understand it, it isn’t amnesia,” he said, then looked at me. “It isn’t just that you don’t remember any of us, is it? You have an entirely different set of memories about your life that doesn’t include any of us or any of your accomplishments. Is that about right?”

I nodded. After living this life for months, I still hadn’t recovered any memory of it, of her, our marriage, or anything that we’d ever done together. But I knew with unshaking certainty the other life I led before waking up next to her that morning long ago. Nothing had changed that.

“But what could it be then, Dr. Hamilton?” she said. She was frustrated, and with good reason. Somehow, I had become an important part of her life, and something had taken it away. “I just don’t understand!”

“Well, we could try some more tests,” the doctor suggested, “Or we could try a different approach.”

“Like what?” She leaned forward, eager to find out.

He turned to me. “The problem may not be physiological.”

She caught on before I did. “Do you think it’s mental?”

He shrugged, then asked me, “Do you remember anything shocking happening to you lately? Something devastating emotionally?”

As far as I remembered, I just went to sleep that night after watching a movie, and prior to that, my life was pretty dull and uneventful. I shook my head.

“How about you?” the doctor asked her. “Anything look off to you lately? Any signs of unusual stress?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “And I would have known if there was.”

She looked at me and added, “You’re lousy at keeping secrets.”

It was a joke. I knew it was, and that she cracked it to lighten the mood, but I couldn’t find it funny. It was like I’d lost any sense of humor with the life I supposedly had.

“What about all the things that I remember, though?” I was way past getting angry or frustrated about it anymore. I’d had months to cope with the situation, and she had been so sweet in helping me through it. But I was still confused by it, even after that long. It didn’t make sense. I turned to her and said, “We even went to the sandwich shop. Remember?”

“The ‘sandwich shop’?” The doctor had no idea what we were talking about.

“He thought it might jog some memory if we went to the place where he said he worked,” she explained poorly.

“No.” I was still amazed at the candor she and I shared, that I could correct her without any hard feelings, and she could do the same to me. “I was trying to prove that I was right. That I worked there, and that everything else was wrong.”

The doctor cocked his head. “And what happened?”

“They didn’t remember him,” she replied. “None of the workers. None of the regulars. No one. Not even the guy that lived in the alley.”

“But I remembered them,” I pointed out. “I got their names right. their orders right. Even what some of my coworkers did for vacation last year. And I knew the place like the back of my hand.”

“But they didn’t know you,” she pointed out. And that was the crux of the matter. They didn’t know me, and it wasn’t a joke. They weren’t acting, nor were they under any threat. They simply didn’t know me, and they were as astounded by what I knew about them as she was. It didn’t make sense.

“How do you explain that, doctor?” Like I said, I was past arguing about it. I was past being angry and frustrated. I just wanted to know what was going on. That’s all.

Dr. Hamilton looked perplexed, then shrugged. “The mind is an amazing thing. It can construct some pretty elaborate things to protect us from ourselves.”

“But how do you explain everything that I knew?”

He shrugged again. “Like I said, the brain is pretty amazing, and the brain of a writer must be even more so. All I can say is that you made some pretty good guesses based on what you saw at the time.”

That almost made me angry. “I knew them. It wasn’t guesswork!”

The doctor lifted his hands placatingly. “Look, I’m not a psychologist. I’m only guessing here. All I can tell you is that there’s a very slim chance that your condition stems from anything physiological. Now, we could perform more tests, do some more blood work, but in the meantime, I suggest that you find yourself a good therapist and work on the issue from that angle, too. Sound good to you?”

I didn’t know what to say, but she did. “We’ll talk it over, but it sounds like good advice. Thank you, doctor.”

As we walked out of the clinic, I had to ask. “So, you think I need a shrink?”

She didn’t hesitate to reply. “I think we need help solving this. If there’s nothing wrong physically…”

She knew me well enough to not finish the thought. I’d been short with her a few times since we started working on it together, but she never gave up on me, and after all that, I didn’t want to give her an excuse to ever consider it.

“Do you think it might be some sort of mental disease?” I tried to phrase the question clinically, so she didn’t think I was accusing her of anything.

She stopped in the middle of the lane, right in the middle of the parking lot, and turned to me. “Is that what you’re afraid it might be?”

I hesitated. She’d been so good to me that I couldn’t hurt her feelings, but I was afraid. I just didn’t know why.

“I think this might be more than I can handle.” I thought it would be harder to be honest with her, but the words just came out naturally. “What if it’s a tumor or something?”

“It’s not a tumor,” she quickly replied. She caught her breath. “If it was, the doctor would have told us already.”

I could barely face the next possibility. “What if I’m crazy?”

She gave me a heart melting smile. “Then, it’s a good thing we’re looking for a therapist.”

I couldn’t let it go as a joke. I grabbed her arms and said, “I’m not kidding. What if I just go psycho and try to hurt you? Or…?”

Her hands found my back and I melted into her embrace. “You’re not going to do that.”

My cheek rested on her shoulder. “How do you know?”

“Because I’d kick your ass first.”

I actually laughed. “You would, too.”

“You bet

Otherwise

I awoke to something warm, soft, and fleshy pressed against my back, with an arm draped over my waist that was not mine. Someone was in bed with me, and they weren’t supposed to be there.

I disengaged in alarm and after rolling to what had to be a safe distance given the limits of a queen-sized bed, I stared in shock at the intruder. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Long auburn locks flowed in gentle waves across her face and shoulders. Graceful eyebrows arched over long lashes and melded perfectly into a short, Grecian nose. Her mouth was slightly parted, and through those full, pink lips issued a quiet snore that bordered on a purr. The sheet was low enough on her slender, athletic body for me to tell that she was utterly naked beneath it, and after doing the gentlemanly thing by pulling the sheet up to cover her better, only one thing remained on my mind. What the hell was she doing in my apartment?

I considered waking her to ask just that, but she beat me to it. With a quiet, incomprehensible mumble and a flutter of her eyes, she stirred and the moment she saw me, she smiled. It was the biggest, brightest, most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

“Good morning,” she muttered sleepily, a very satisfied expression brightening her face.

I didn’t know what to say. A beautiful woman had broken into my apartment during the night, undressed, and slept next to me, all without my knowledge. I’m not a heavy sleeper. Never was. So, I couldn’t fathom how she had pulled it off without waking me up, and then she had the nerve to act as if nothing was wrong with the entire scenario. It was baffling. But I was certain of one thing. If she had meant me any harm, she would have done it in my sleep. That alone kept me from running to the phone and calling the police. At least, for the moment.

“Who are you?” Even I couldn’t believe that was the first thing out of my mouth. In hindsight, I could have been suave about it. After all, how many guys wake up to a beautiful naked woman in their beds? But I wasn’t thinking about that just then. I needed answers, and her presence was starting to make me nervous. “How’d you get in here?”

Her nose crinkled in momentary confusion. It was very cute. “Very funny.”

Funny? How? What’s funny about breaking and entering? But I didn’t say that, although her cavalier attitude rattled me.

“I’m serious!” That was the stupidest thing I have ever said. When did that phrase ever have the desired effect? I should have already predicted it, but she smiled awkwardly, her nose crinkling again, as she cocked her head to study me carefully.

“Are you feeling all right?” She sounded genuinely concerned, and I was starting to feel the same way. She reached out to touch me, and I withdrew from her. She took her hand back with an even more concerned expression on her face. “What’s wrong?”

What wasn’t? But I didn’t say that either. Instead, I said, “Look, you better get out of here before I call the cops.”

She sat up, letting the sheet slide off, and yes, she was naked underneath. At least, she was topless. I was still uncertain about the rest of her. Like a gentleman, I dropped my gaze to the bed after just a glimpse and resisted the temptation to stare. A moment later, she took my chin and forced me to look her in the eye.

“What’s wrong?” Now, she was really concerned. And a bit afraid, but not for herself. For me. It was genuinely disorientating. “What’s happening to you?”

I didn’t know. Something weird was going on, and it was either her fault or mine. Either she had broken in and slept next to me, or… I didn’t know what else it could have been.

“What’s happening is you breaking into my apartment.” I decided to leave out the part about sleeping naked next to me. It was too obvious. “While I slept.”

Her brow crinkled in concern. “Breaking in? I used my key!”

I couldn’t believe it. “Key? Is that what they call it now?”

The crease in her brow deepened. “What are you talking about? We both got keys when we moved in!”

When we moved in? As far as I knew, I moved in alone. My name was the only one on the lease. I was ab out to confront her on the lie when I finally noticed the bedroom and looked around. That wasn’t my stuff. Or rather, some of it was mine, but the decor was completely different, even down to the color of the walls. They were sky blue, now, and not the mauve from the previous tenant. There were even pictures on them. Sailboats. Kittens. Some of a couple that I couldn’t make out in the dimness of the room. And the trinkets scattered here and there were feminine but neutral enough to be bearable, with a limited scattering of my own trinkets to make the place mine, as well. That wasn’t how it looked last night when I went to bed. Either she had somehow managed to do all of that overnight without waking me, or something very weird was going on, and I suspected the latter.

“Are you okay?” She said it quietly. Cautiously, so as not to startle me, and it broke the trance.

“What?” It was a purely instinctual reply. I was very confused.

“You were just staring at everything.” She was genuinely worried, in her tone and her expression. It was heart wrenching. She reached out and placed a hand gently on my arm, and I made myself not flinch. “Are you feeling all right?”

I was almost tired of that question, but I couldn’t argue that it brought up a valid point. Was I all right? There was no way anyone could affect such a radical change in my bedroom’s decor overnight, but then again, there was no way that a woman as beautiful as her would ever give a guy like me a second glance, much less agree to sleep with me. I had no clue what was going on, and I replied in the only way I knew how. “I don’t know.”

She squeezed my arm. “Maybe we should go see the doctor?”

At that point, I had no ideas of my own, so I nodded. Someone had to have the answers, and I needed to start somewhere. A doctor was probably the best place to begin. There was one little problem. “I don’t have a doctor.”

She smiled and shook her head as if I’d just told a bad joke. “Don’t be silly. Dr. Hamilton will squeeze you in somewhere, I’m sure!”

Dr. Hamilton? I’d never heard of them, but apparently, she had, and her confidence in the good doctor made me nod in unfelt agreement. And it made her happy to see it.

“Good!” She gave my arm another squeeze and slid out of bed, letting the sheet slide off her statuesque figure. I averted my eyes again, but not as quickly as before. I still couldn’t figure out why she had chosen me. She was way out of my league. As she headed for the door, she tossed over her shoulder, “I’ll call him right now. I’m sure his service will pick up.”

That last bit was meant to be reassuring, which meant that she thought there was a real problem with me. And that made me think the same thing. I sat up to process it and discovered that I was as naked as she was. I’m not sure why I hadn’t noticed earlier.

“He’ll see you this morning,” she said the moment she came back. She hadn’t bothered to put anything in the interim, and she wasn’t bothered about being naked in front of me. it made me uncomfortable, but it helped drive home the very unsettling idea that I should know her better than I did.

“That was quick,” I remarked, looking at the closet to keep from staring at her. I wondered how I was going to get dressed without her watching me.

She put her arms around me, and I could feel her breasts pressing against my arm. “You’re his favorite patient. Why wouldn’t he make time for you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Why would he?”

She squeezed me tight. “Are you kidding me? He loves having a prizewinning author for a patient.”

That threw me for a loop. “Prizewinning?”

Then I noticed them. Some of the pictures on the wall were of me in a tuxedo, holding a medal or award of some sort with her right at my side, beaming proudly. I never participated in any of those events. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember them. They had never happened.

She let me go and stood up. “You better get dressed. We have some time, so we’ll stop for coffee along the way.”

That sounded more expensive than I could afford. I knew what coffee cost in the city. “I’ll brew some here. I think I have some muffins left over, too.”

She paused on her way to the closet, then turned to give me a concerned look. “What?”

That look on her face drew my attention off her butt. “Um… I mean, coffee’s so expensive. I thought…”

Her brows knit in worry. “Since when did you worry about that?”

I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. “Well, I mean, I have coffee here, and I just made muffins a couple of days ago…”

Her brows knit tighter. “Since when could you bake? Or even make a decent cup of coffee?”

That was a bit offensive. “Hey, I can make coffee!”

She looked very worried. “I think the sooner we see the doctor the better.”

Afterwards

I woke up flat on my back staring at a slew of blue swirlie-cues, which turned out to be the ceiling. After that revelation sank in, I took a look around before doing anything else. Nope. It wasn’t all just a freakish nightmare. The weird furniture was still there, as well as the high-tech mushroom, and standing next to it was her. The cute Interface.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I lied. “Why do you look like that?”

“I’m modeled after my designer,” she replied. “But I hardly think that’s relevant.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, sitting up. That was a mistake. My brain immediately began to spin around inside my skull, but at least it was still inside my skull. I shudder to think what might happen if it weren’t. Gripping my head in both hands, just in case the old mind pudding decided to attempt an escape, I soldiered on. “It might matter to some people.”

She showed no sign of having a sense of humor, but to be honest, it was probably only funny to me. Instead, a frown creased her face and she said, “Well, if you must know, the plan was a success. In fact, without your… assistance, it went flawlessly. The precise mass was delivered to the precise target with the precise trajectory, resulting in the initiation of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Congratulations. You have become part of a static temporal event.”

That felt good. I gave her a nod and immediately felt nauseous. “I knew you two could do it.”

The frown didn’t leave her face. “There is one problem, however.”

I didn’t want to hear it. All I wanted was to bask in the afterglow of a mission accomplished. But her statement bothered me too much. Then, I remembered what I didn’t see when I looked around earlier, and I looked around for it again, but it wasn’t there.

“Where’s Scaley?”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “If you mean the dinosaurian, he fled via his dimensional fold device when we dived towards the planet.”

I sat up straighter. “And you let him go?”

She cocked her head irritably at me. “We were too preoccupied at the time to concern ourselves with the matter. Besides, I am the Interface. I do not have the ability to restrain prisoners.”

My nose wrinkled in utter disbelief. “What about the sonic?”

“I couldn’t do that and pilot myself, now, could I?” The ship sounded quite petulant about it. It must have been taking lessons from the Interface while I was out.

“My apologies,” I conceded. Then, it hit me. “Wait! Then, he’s gone along with the rest of his timeline.”

“Most likely,” she replied. “Which makes his parting vow of revenge moot.”

I shook my head, suddenly feeling very heavy. “You realize what we did, don’t you?”

“We destroyed countless lives to save countless others,” she immediately replied, telling me that she was always aware of the cost. She didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t need to. I didn’t want to think about it, anyway. At least, not right then. That vow of revenge was starting to trouble me, though.

“Do you think he’s really gone?” I tried not to sound nervous about it.

She rolled her eyes back in thought, then said, “Chronal possibilities were in momentary flux, so there is a chance that he somehow escaped erasure.”

“What kind of chance?” Okay, I sounded a little nervous that time.

She studied me carefully. “Slim, at best.”

I raised a brow. “You don’t want to quote the numerical odds?”

“You wouldn’t understand them, anyway,” she replied.

Touche. “So, what now? We have a potential nemesis on our hands?”

She looked at me dubiously. “Doubtful.”

I was confused. “So, what’s the problem?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “You are.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay. You’re kicking me out. Fine. I get it. So, just drop me off at the hotel and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Her brows knit together. “You don’t understand. You cannot leave the vessel. At least, not for now.”

My brows lifted into my hairline. “Wow. You two like me that much?”

She frowned. “No, not at all.”

“I like you,” the ship helpfully chimed in.

“Thanks,” I told it.

“You cannot leave because if you do, your head will explode.” She was quite serious about it.

“Explode?” That didn’t sound good.

“Possibly literally,” she added. “Your brain is not meant to access the full scope of the Matrix, and unfortunately, the vessel did not take that into account when it linked itself to you.”

“I didn’t have time to think,” the ship whined.

“You quite literally did not think at all,” she coldly retorted. “You reacted. There is a difference.”

“I’m sorry,” the ship wimpered.

“Hold it!” I needed to regroup after the whole head exploding revelation, but there wasn’t time for it. I had to plunge ahead anyway. “I can’t leave?”

“Not until we stabilize the connection,” she replied. “And implant safeguards to prevent further damage.”

That got my attention. “Further damage??”

“Your mind may have already been damaged by the link,” she replied. “We do not yet know how. But it could get worse.”

I did not like that in the least. “Damaged, how?”

She took a deep breath. “Unknown. We must wait and see.”

“And the safeguards will cure me?” I wanted to be hopeful, but her serious expression didn’t change.

“No.” She had a terrible bedside manner. “The safeguards should prevent further damage or… anything more serious.”

“More serious.” I couldn’t believe she was being so indirect about it. “You mean, death?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted, never losing that serious expression. “Or perhaps worse.”

I couldn’t believe her. “What’s worse than dying?”

“You do not want to know.” If she didn’t look so serious, I might have thought she was kidding.

On second thought, there was no way to tell if she wasn’t, either.

“Right.” I needed to deal with it by talking myself through it. “Well, I’m not dead yet, so what do the safeguards do?”

“They limit your access to the Matrix to a level that your human brain can handle.” Dang, she was still so serious that it was making me nervous.

“Why not just remove the link?” It seemed simple enough to me.

She hesitated briefly. “It cannot be removed. The implementation was flawed, resulting in permanent connection.”

“I’m sorry,” the ship whined.

The instant it said that, I felt its shame. And more, I felt the connection between us, and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of the consequences of my stupid decisions. Like when I came up with the plan to ram the Earth. And more than that, it felt like the ship was more than a means to return to my time and place. It felt like my kid, and I wanted to be there to watch it grow up.

“It’s okay,” I told it. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It did, though,” she immediately interjected. “It could have caused irreparable harm or death with its reckless -!”

“Agree to disagree,” I quickly interrupted, feeling the ship sinking into despair. Directing my thoughts to it, I added, “I, for one, do not mind the connection. It feels really nice.”

“It does?” The ship was hopeful.

“Until your head explodes into a million pieces,” she helpfully added.

I turned to her in shock. “Did you really just say that?”

She blinked in astonishment at herself. “Your connection must have corrupted the Matrix and by consequence, my programming. The sooner we establish those safeguards, the better.”

“I agree.” I didn’t want to imagine what a sass-mouth she might become with parts of my mind floating around inside her head. And the ship tittered in agreement.

The End

“Aha!” I burst into the console room, yelling to grab the dinosaur’s attention. He turned away from the console in surprise, immediately leveling his pistol at me, and I voluntarily stopped dead in my tracks. My plan had worked a little too well.

“How did you -?” he spluttered before shaking his head violently and snapping his jaws to cut his own exclamation short. “Never mind! There’s nothing you can do! Empire ships will be here soon, so just stay back or I will shoot you, and this time it won’t just be on stun!”

I lifted my hands in defeat. “You don’t have to do this.”

The velociraptor bobbed its head in a figure eight pattern. “Don’t try to trick me. It won’t work.”

“Of course, not.” I wish I could say I sounded confident and in control, but the truth was, I couldn’t take my eyes off the business end of its weapon. I tried to keep my voice from trembling but didn’t exactly succeed. “I’m just an idiot. I couldn’t possibly compete with you in the brains department.”

The dinosaur turned his head to study me suspiciously with one eye. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing!” It came out a bit too hastily, so I had to talk quickly to cover myself. “I couldn’t possibly trick you! Not even if I asked the ship to reactivate the Interface!”

The dinosaur shook its head like it was shaking off a good drenching and incredulously demanded, “What?”

“Like, for instance, if I said, Ship, reactivate the Interface!” I really hoped the ship got the hint. “You wouldn’t be tricked by that, would you?”

The dinosaur aimed his pistol at me, and behind him the Interface shimmered into being. Even before she formed completely, she scowled darkly and demanded, “Oh, no! You didn’t!”

The dinosaur whipped around towards the sound of her voice, and I leapt forward, swinging both hands, clenched together, at his neck. I nearly shattered the bones in both hands upon impact, and it didn’t phase the raptor in the least. As I stumbled back a step nursing my injuries, he turned and backhanded me across the console room. As I skidded across the floor, I counted myself lucky that I ducked just in time to catch the blow on my shoulder rather than my head. He could have broken my neck.

“You forged a link?” She was irate, but I wasn’t sure who she was yelling at, me or the ship. “Do you realize how dangerous that is?”

The dinosaur stomped towards the console, and I had to stop it from turning her off again. Despite the ache in my shoulder, which I assumed meant it was either broken or dislocated, I thrust myself to my feet and whipped the sonic out of my pocket. Brandishing it before me, I yelled in my most commanding tone, “Stop! Or else!”

The raptor glanced back at me in only passing interest. Apparently, I wasn’t a threat to it. But its eye caught the sonic in my hand and it turned, hissing sporadically. “Or else, what? You’ll put up a shelf?”

“Three words,” I told it. “Sonic pest control.”

I thumbed the activator. The device whirred. It vibrated in my hand, and the green gem glowed. The raptor hissed in pain as a sound that only he could hear spiked his brain. He threw his paws against the spots where his ears were and staggered beneath the invisible onslaught, but it didn’t drop its weapon like I’d hoped it would. I had to take what I could get, so I rushed to the console and warded the raptor away from it with the sonic, and the raptor obligingly staggered back.

“All right,” the Interface grudgingly admitted. “That was mildly clever. But he is still armed and still here.”

“One thing at a time,” I replied, turning to sit against the edge of the console. I kept my eye on the raptor as it desperately tried to block out the excruciating sound. “We need to get out of here. Now!”

She stared off into space for a moment. “The time rotor is still damaged. Auto repairs will take approximately -!”

“We don’t have time,” I interrupted. “They’re coming, and they’ll tear the ship apart.”

She stared into space again, and a worried frown creased her delicate face. “I see.”

“Is there anything we can do?” I didn’t know why I even had to ask. With the memories of all those pilots haunting my head, I should have known the answer already. But there was something very weird about them. They were there, but they weren’t talking to me. At least, not right then. “Can this ship move at all?”

“We have retained spatial movement,” she quickly replied. “But it is limited.”

“Can we outrun the ships that are coming?” I couldn’t believe that I didn’t already know that, either. “Or get out of here before they arrive?”

She stared into space for a moment. “Unlikely, although without knowing the motive capabilities of the incoming vessels, it is difficult to calculate.”

All the time we spoke, I was watching the raptor carefully. He struggled to remain on his feet as he staggered in tiny circles, hissing in agony. I hated doing that to him, but I knew what would happen if I shut the sonic down, and I couldn’t risk it. But watching him reminded me why we were in that time and place, and I had an idea that I honestly wished hadn’t occurred to me.

“Then, we do what we came here to do,” I told her and the ship before I could back out of it. “Fix our mistake.”

She cocked her head dubiously. “How do you propose to do that? I already told you we cannot go back on our own timeline, even if the rotors were still functional.”

“Then, we do everything right here.” I honestly wished that I felt as confident as I sounded, and her skeptical look almost shattered what little there was of it. Before she could ask what I was talking about, and before I could chicken out of the whole thing, I said, “We recreate the impact ourselves.”

She frowned dubiously. “How? There are no stellar bodies nearby that match the mass or trajectory necessary to duplicate the impact’s effects. Even if we found something in the asteroid belt, this vessel is in no condition to tow it here or set it on the correct course.”

“No, you’re right.” I don’t know why the memories chose to let me know that when they weren’t helping with anything else, but I didn’t have time to complain about it. “We have everything we need right here, in the ship.”

She eyed me dubiously, and I said, “Mass! Mass and trajectory! That’s what we need, right? The precise mass and trajectory necessary to duplicate the event exactly.”

“Although a few hours later,” she sarcastically added.

“Does that really matter considering the scale of time?” I’m not sure which memory the words were coming from, but they weren’t from mine. “A few hours compared to millions of years?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, apparently digesting what I said. “Very well, then how do you plan to deliver the mass?”

That was the part that I really didn’t like. “We dive towards Earth and release it precisely where it must go.”

She stared at me as if I had two heads. “You are, of course, joking.”

I couldn’t help grimacing. “I wish I was.”

She rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. “You do realize, of course, that this vessel is not designed for maneuverability or speed. It is a reconnaissance and research vessel, not a fighter.”

“We just need to dive at the precise speed and trajectory,” I told her, unable to believe that I was the one concocting the cockamamie scheme, “And release the mass at the precise moment.”

“And where do you intend to get this mass?” she demanded.

This was the part that I didn’t think the ship would like. “We jettison it from the ship.”

“We do?” the ship demanded incredulously.

“You can do that, right?” I was fairly confident of the answer, but I had to ask so I could boost the ship’s confidence.

“Yes,” it uncertainly replied.

“What are you doing over there?” the raptor demanded. It was a strain for it to speak through the pain I was still inflicting, and I felt terrible. But I had to do what I had to do.

“The amount of mass is moot,” she firmly interjected, ignoring the raptor. “With a nearly infinite amount suspended in transdimensional space, the mass necessary isn’t a concern. Escaping from such velocity is. This vessel is not designed to do what you propose and still allow for an escape from the aftereffects.”

The ship whimpered. “Am I going to die?”

“Very probably,” she instantly replied.

“No one’s going to die!” I had to nip this in the bud, before we all lost our nerve, but she was right, and I already knew it. But for some weird reason, it didn’t bother me as much as it should have. Maybe it was the memories whispering secretly to me, but there was one that I knew for sure. “I have faith in us.”

“Really?” She wasn’t buying it, and I didn’t blame her. “And how are your piloting skills, pilot?”

I winced. She had to bring that up. “All right. So, I might not have the mind to hand motor skills to pull it off, but I know we can do this.”

I nodded at her. “You can do the calculations necessary so we have the right amount of mass and the correct trajectory, can’t you?”

She frowned, looking insulted. “Of course, I can.”

“And ship?” I had to talk fast before either of them could put a damper on things. “Can you fly yourself with that much precision?”

“No.”

I didn’t expect that, and it threw me off a little. But a spark of memory put me right back in the saddle.

“We can use the telepathic link,” I suggested without thinking it through. “You can steer yourself through me!”

“No, it can’t,” she firmly disagreed.

“What are you doing?” the raptor desperately cried, still staggering beneath the sonic attack.

We ignored him.

Before I could demand to know why she said that, she said, “The connection would burn your mind out in a heartbeat. The human brain is not compatible with an information matrix of that immense size.”

A hard lump formed in my throat, and it took a tremendously hard swallow to get it down. I should have backed away from the crazy scheme right then and there and spared myself what I already knew would happen, but instead, I stupidly said, “That’s a risk we have to take.”

She stared at me strangely, with an expression that I couldn’t figure out. Then, she nodded. “You are the pilot. You now know the risks. If that is your decision, then it is final.”

I had to swallow another lump before nodding back. “Ship, do you think you can use the link like that?”

The ship hesitated before reluctantly saying, “Yes.”

“Good.” I had to be brave. For them. Inside, my guts were turning to Jello. I turned to the Interface and asked, “Do you have those calculations ready?”

She nodded. Weirdly enough, she didn’t even bother to act insulted.

“Just tell the ship when to jettison the mass,” I told her. Then, I rolled my eyes towards the ceiling. “Whenever you’re ready, ship.”

That’s when a golden firework exploded behind my eyes and I stopped completely.

Escapade

I couldn’t do anything, of course, until I escaped from that closet. I tried the door, but the knob wouldn’t turn.

“Locked?” I couldn’t believe it. “Really? Who locks a closet? Who even has a lock on their closet?”

I turned my back on the offending door and my eyes toward the ceiling to address the voice that I could only assume belonged to the ship. “Do you have any bright ideas?”

“They’re coming,” it wailed in its childlike voice. “Oh, they’re going to cut me apart! Help me!”

“I can’t!” I winced as soon as I said it. I was much too harsh, and there was no call for it, even under the circumstances. I took a breath, collected myself, and tried again, but much calmer. “I can’t do anything from in here. Is there any way that you can get me out of this closet?”

The child… I mean, the ship didn’t answer for a while. I thought I’d lost connection, or it had abandoned me as useless, and then it said, “Do you mean…like… jettisoning the door?”

“Doing what now?” I felt stupid asking, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Making the door go away,” it quietly replied. It really sounded like a little kid uncertain about itself. “I can do that… I think.”

That was good news. “If you can, it would really help a lot.”

“Okay,” it replied with the same uncertainty. “I’ll try.”

I waited. Somehow, I knew that rushing the ship to do anything wouldn’t do any of us any good, but the wait took far longer than I expected and yielded no results. The door was still there and I finally had to intervene.

“Are you okay?” I thought that was better than asking it why it wasn’t doing anything about the door. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“No,” it replied in the tone of a kid doing a difficult math problem. “It’s just harder than I thought.”

I accepted that. If anyone had asked me to disappear an entire door, I would have had trouble, too. Then, I had a brilliant idea. “What about just the knob? Can you make that disappear?”

“Maybe,” the kid replied, sounding more uncertain of itself. I knew I had to encourage it, but my experience with anything like that was pretty limited. Still, I had to try.

“Just take your time and concentrate,” I told it.

The ship groaned woefully. “But they’re almost here!”

It was going to panic, and then it wasn’t going to be able to do anything, so I had to calm it down. In my most soothing voice, I said, “I know, but you can’t think about that right now. Just concentrate on making the door or the knob disappear. Okay? Can you do that for me?”

“But they’re coming!” Its whine was heart wrenching, and it was impossible to think of it as anything other than a frightened little kid.

“I know,” I said as soothingly as I could. “And I know you’re scared. But you can do this, can’t you? You can jettison things?”

I decided to use its own phrasing, so it understood exactly what I meant, and it worked. The ship hemmed audibly for a moment, then admitted, “I’m better at jettisoning bigger things, like whole segments of my interior. The little things are harder.”

That was a bummer. I had to rethink my strategy a little bit. I glanced around the room for ideas and stopped on the racks of clothing. An idea formed. Clothes had pockets, and pockets sometimes kept things like keys and other things useful for opening locks. I rushed to investigate but soon found something quite depressing. They were women’s clothes, mostly pantsuits, and most of the pockets were fake.

“You have got to be kidding me!” I couldn’t help putting voice to my frustration, but it didn’t stop me from rifling everything that had a decent pocket until I found something very strange. It looked like a high-tech magic wand but was made of a patchwork of materials, mostly brass, was as thick in diameter as two fingers, and was full of knobbly bits. One half was bound in old, brown leather and was obviously the grip while on the other end was a green gem encased in a spherical cage. My thumb accidentally brushed one of the knobbly bits and the subsequent whirr that issued from it nearly stopped my heart. It also made the whole thing vibrate and the gem glow eerily.

“What in the world is this thing?” I wondered, and just as I was about to further wonder if it could help me out of the closet, my head exploded with images that were not mine. Other people’s lifetimes ripped through my skull. Adventures that were not my own suddenly became mine, and I knew things that I had never learned in my entire life. It flooded my head, my eyes, my ears, every sense that I knew and several that I had just then discovered, and then it was over and I was on my back, lying in a very uncomfortable position across a very uncomfortable bed of very uncomfortable shoes.

I sat bolt upright, rubbing my temples. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” the ship frantically replied. “I thought it would help.”

I don’t know how I knew that the ship had forged a telepathic link with me to share the experiences of the previous pilots, but it didn’t matter. I knew the sonic setting I needed to oscillate the lock into submission. The only thing I didn’t know was what I was going to do once I got out.

“Interface,” I called on a hunch. “Can you hear me?”

“He turned her off,” the ship told me.

I sighed heavily. “Then, I’ll just have to turn her back on again.”

“And save me?” the kid pleaded.

“And save you,” I assured it, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

“How?”

It was a fair question. As an American, I should have told it that I was going to go in swinging and take out that highly evolved dinosaur. As a coward and someone that had never been in a fight in my entire life, I didn’t have a clue, even though I had a few hundred lifetimes freshly swirling through my skull to use for reference. In fact, for some reason, despite their obvious presence, I couldn’t fix on any of them for help. They swirled around like ghosts, visible but untouchable and thus completely useless.

“I’ll think of something,” I said, tuning the sonic for unlocking doors. It was weird that I could do that and nothing else with those memories.

The device whirred in my hand, the door popped open, and I leapt into the hall, knowing exactly how to navigate my way to the console room. I even knew that it was called a console room and not a bridge, control room, ops, or any of the other names sci-fi might give it. But oddly enough, I couldn’t identify any of the rooms I passed on the way, including the one with the weird metal tree and the bulbous glass fruits hanging from it. I couldn’t worry about that, though. There was a child to rescue.

“Tell me what’s happening in the console room, ship!” I did my best to keep my voice calm, so there would be no reason for the ship to panic. “What are they talking about, now?”

I ran past three more rooms and the ship didn’t reply. Worried, I asked, a little louder, “Ship? You still there?”

After one more room, it said, “He’s just standing there staring at the console. Why does he look so scary?”

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean to be.” I tried to sound reassuring, but I had to admit that the velociraptor kind of creeped me out, too. “He’s probably very nice.”

“Not to me,” the ship whined. “He wants to cut me up!”

“He doesn’t know you.” It sounded stupid the moment I said it and I knew that I had to do better, but at the moment, I was in too much of a hurry. “Just tell me what he’s doing. Is he fiddling with anything?”

That sounded better in my head. Before I could correct myself, the ship said, “No. He’s just standing there. What should I do?”

I suddenly had a wild idea. “Can you reactivate the Interface?”

“Do you mean, right now?”

“Not yet.” I was impressed that the ship could even do that. It made me think that the Interface wasn’t being completely honest with me about its own abilities. “But I’ll let you know when I get there.”

“Are you sure?” The ship was getting scared again. It probably hadn’t stopped being afraid the entire time. It was heartbreaking.

“Don’t worry.” I tried hard to sound reassuring. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay.”

It sounded so vulnerable that I was suddenly racing as fast as I could to get there. I still didn’t have a plan, really. Only a concept of one. But it was still important that I get to the console room as fast as possible and stop the dinosaur’s dastardly plan. The thing was, there was still a lot of distance between me and my destination, and I could only run so fast.

“With this much dimensional space to screw around with,” I couldn’t help muttering under my breath, “Why didn’t anyone think to install a train or a turbolift or something!”

An idea struck me, but it was a long shot.

“Ship,” I called, panting for my life. I’d done more running that day than I had in a very long time. “Do you know anything about dimensional folding?”

The ship let me pass two more rooms before it timidly replied. “No. Should I?”

“Never mind.” I had to drop the idea before the ship had something else to worry about. “Forget I asked.”

“Okay,” it replied uncertainly.

I kept running, really wishing that the people who had designed the ship had thought to install transporters, too.

Awareness

What is the moment when we first become self-aware? When we realize that we are individuals with our own thoughts and feelings? Where do our memories even begin? My first memory was when I was four or five, watching Star Trek and waiting for my brother to come home from school. At least, that’s what I count as my first real memory, and perhaps my first moment of self-awareness. It’s different for everyone, of course. Some claim to remember things when they were one or two years old. There’s even a chance that there are people who retain no memory of any event at all, or who haven’t yet or never will come to any type of self-awareness whatsoever. I can’t vouch for them. I can only vouch for myself.

I suppose before we become self-aware, our time is so taken up with discovering the physical world around us that we have no opportunity to discover the world within. We’re caught up in touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, and wondering about everything in the outside world, discovering things that in the present day have become mundane, but at the time, we couldn’t imagine there being anything else to life except that. Nothing deeper. Nothing more personal. Maybe it takes some epiphytic event, no matter how insignificant it might seem later on, to trigger our sense of self-awareness, and maybe that newfound self-awareness is the just the first step in forming lasting memory. Maybe our self-awareness serves as an anchor for those discoveries, helps make sense of it all, puts everything into a unique perspective that we can understand and retain. Maybe those discoveries help shape us in ways we don’t even notice and help form our individual styles and personalities, even our ethics and morals. And maybe the whole process is supposed to prepare us for the madness that comes later in life.

I wasn’t prepared at all.

A red velociraptor in an orange jumpsuit was pointing a tubular device at me, which I could only assume was a gun of some sort. To that end, my hands went straight up into the air in the universal sign of surrender. It was reflex. I’m an American, after all. I know what guns can do.

He, she, or it had come out of nowhere to… no, that isn’t quite accurate. I should get this right, or as close to correct as I can, if I’m going to relate this story properly. For the record. A velociraptor had stepped out of a transparent donut suspended in midair, made out of either the air itself or space-time, or something more technical, like timey-whimey stuff or something, and held a supposed gun on me, not only demanding my immediate surrender, but also vaguely accusing me of crimes that I hadn’t even committed. Oh, did I mention that this was over sixty million years ago? And that I was the only human being to ever exist because of my own screw-up?

Do you see now why I wasn’t prepared? Who could be for something like that? Just wait, though. It gets worse.

He, she, it, or they cocked their head curiously, like a bird. “You don’t look like much. I expected you would be taller.”

It had some nerve saying that. It wasn’t any taller than me, and I thought velociraptors weren’t supposed to be much bigger than a medium-sized dog. But I wasn’t about to argue with an armed dinosaur, so I let it slide. Pick your battles wisely, my Pop always said. You’re less likely to get shot that way.

“And what are you doing?” it hissed irritably, gesturing over my head with the weird device. I glanced up but didn’t see what the dinosaur was talking about, and it noticed, which made it even more irritated. “With your paws! Why are they in the air?”

I didn’t quite understand, and it hissed menacingly. “Put them down or I’ll fire!”

“I don’t think I can.” I was too terrified to move. Decades of American news had drummed into me just how dangerous guns could be, and now that one was pointed right at me, it was overwhelming.

“Do it,” the velociraptor urgently hissed. “Or I open fire!”

I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped my arms. Luckily, it didn’t open fire at the sudden move, so I pried my eyes open a bit for a little peek. The dinosaur cocked its head at me, demanding, “What were you doing? Was that some kind of trick?”

That was brow raising. The dinosaur either didn’t recognize the universal sign for surrender, or it was the suspicious type, and I had a feeling that it might shoot if I tried explaining myself, so I didn’t even bother. But my silence only irritated it further.

“Don’t play games with me,” it growled. “I’m watching you! Now, power down the remainder of your systems!”

That raised my brows even higher and I glanced helplessly at the Interface, but she just regarded me blandly. She wasn’t going to be any help whatsoever, so I stared at the console instead, but that didn’t help either. It still made absolutely no sense to me.

“What are you doing?” the velociraptor demanded. “I told you to power down! Now, do it!”

My arms stiffened at my sides as a whole slew of scenarios flew through my head. Should I dive for the floor when the shooting started, or make a run for it, zigzagging for cover? Should I try to overpower the creature instead? Or should I throw a bunch of switches and hope for the best? I didn’t bother trying to figure it out, though. I knew exactly what I was going to do. Chicken out.

“Look.” My voice trembled as I spoke, but I couldn’t help it. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m telling you that you have the wrong guy. I don’t know who you are or why you’re after me, but -!”

The velociraptor hissed sporadically and it was so frightening that I couldn’t finish the thought. I remained rigidly in place while it laughed, and when it finally caught its breath again, it hissed, “Is that really the best you can do?”

That was shocking but I still didn’t turn around. “I beg your pardon?”

“This isn’t you?” it hissed. Curiosity made me glance over my shoulder, but shock made me turn fully. It held a small silver box in its other claw, about the size of a folded phone, with a brilliantly blue screen that threw an image in the air, and that image was me. It was just my head and shoulders, but it was like looking in a mirror, if that mirror also slowly rotated your reflection to cover all angles. As impressive as the technology was, it was unnerving seeing myself like that.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, unsure if I even wanted an answer.

“At the scene of your last crime, of course,” it hissed. It squeezed the box and the image changed to a scene of me running for my life through some sort of military compound. I peered at it carefully. It didn’t look like it, but it had to be CGI, then an entire building exploded in the background and suddenly, I knew why I was running.

“That’s not me,” I protested. I pointed at it for emphasis. “I’ve never been there before in my life!”

The dinosaur trilled in what I could only assume was a sarcastic manner. “Don’t play games with me! There are hundreds of witnesses that place you on the scene. In fact, there are hundreds of witnesses that place you at the scene of every one of your attacks, and holographic evidence to corroborate their story. You are an alien menace, and you won’t be harming the Empire ever again!”

That wasn’t very encouraging, and I had nothing further to say. I knew when I was being railroaded. Not that I’d ever been railroaded before, but I’d seen it on TV plenty of times, and this was a railroading if ever I saw it. I didn’t know if that little device was manufacturing the evidence against me right on the spot or if it was doctored surveillance video, but I knew that there was nothing I could say to convince the dinosaur of my innocence, so I didn’t even try.

“Now, power down,” it commanded. “Then, I’m taking you into custody!”

I glanced at the console. It still made no sense to me. The console, that is. The video didn’t make sense, either, but that was something else altogether. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Of course, you can,” it hissed, adding a snap of its jaw. “Now, do it!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, as well as every orifice in my body. I knew what I had to do, and I didn’t like the odds of surviving it, but if the movies had taught me anything, it was that sometimes, you just needed to bluff your way out of a situation. Taking a deep breath, I put on my most detached expression and turned to face my captor.

“I’m afraid that if you want this ship powered down,” I said, lifting my chin brazenly, “Then you’ll have to do it yourself!”

The dinosaur hissed menacingly and snapped its jaw. Its weapon claw twitched, grabbing my full attention, then it shook its head violently, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was calling my bluff, I just knew it was, and I wasn’t prepared for that. The weapons claw twitched again as it gestured at the console, but I forced myself not to react.

“I said, power down,” it firmly hissed.

Something wasn’t right. I didn’t know what it was, but I did know one thing. The dinosaur was more qualified for the job than I ever could be. And it bothered me so much that I griped before thinking it through first. “What difference does it make who powers down the ship?”

The velociraptor shook its head violently. “Just do what I say and power down!”

I admit that I’m pretty thick. That’s probably why I asked, “Why can’t you do it?”

The dinosaur shook its head harder and snapped its jaw. “Just do it! You’re right there, anyway!”

That raised a brow. I glanced at the Interface, but she just shrugged. That was no help! I was on my own again, but some things were starting to fall into place.

“Are you saying that you don’t know how?” I was only bluffing to entice the creature to do it for me, but the raptor suddenly froze dangerously still and stared at me with unblinking eyes. It was silent for so long that I knew I had stumbled onto something, and believe me, I was just as shocked as anybody. I was riding so high on that little triumph that my mouth kept going before my brain could stop it.

“You don’t, do you?” I should have kept quiet, but I didn’t have the ability. “You haven’t a clue how to operate this ship! That’s why you need me to do it for you!”

The dinosaur bobbed its snout randomly for a moment, then blurted, “Alright! Yes! You’re right! I don’t know anything about your controls!”

It extended the weapon at the console. “Now, shut it down before I do it my way!”

I glanced from the weapon to the Interface. A hint of worry leaked through her stoic facade. But I was on a roll, and there were no brakes.

“No, you won’t,” I replied.

The dinosaur shook its head. “You want to make a wager?”

I stepped into the line of fire, and the raptor froze, watching me intently. I glanced at the Interface. She held her chin high but didn’t interfere. I didn’t expect her to, anyway. It was the stupidest thing I’d ever done, and it was about to get stupider.

“If you wanted me dead, you would have already done it,” I said, parroting what the Interface had said earlier. “And if you wanted this place destroyed, you would have done that, too. You have the weapons for it. But you didn’t. Now, why is that?”

The dinosaur shook its head. “You’re going to stand trial for your crimes!”

That sounded so reasonable that I nodded, but it still didn’t sound like the full picture. “Okay, but what about the console? You have a ship just like this one, so operating it should be a breeze. Right?”

The dinosaur growled but didn’t speak. And it kept the weapon pointed at the console.

“Unless your ship isn’t like this one?” I glanced at the Interface, who had inspired that line of thinking. “We were wondering about that, weren’t we?”

“The molecular composition of the other craft is consistent with materials found on Earth,” she finally said. “The other capsule is either a copy of the original design or a very coincidental parallel development.”

The raptor’s dewlaps twitched at the mention of a copy, and I knew that I was onto something. “You need this vessel intact, don’t you? You can’t destroy it or anything inside it because you need it…”

That’s where my train of thought ended and I had to deboard. Luckily, the raptor provided the rest.

“Yes, it’s true,” it hissed softly, undulating its head as if swallowing something whole. “You’ve destroyed so much of our work that with this vessel, we’ll finally have a complete time machine, and after we take it apart, we’ll have a whole fleet of them! But why are you acting so ignorant? You’re the one that destroyed the laboratories working on the project!”

That was brow raising, too. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It snapped its jaw. “I find that difficult to swallow.”

It took a moment for the ramifications to sink in. If the dinosaurs were successful in taking the ship and taking it apart, then I had no chance of correcting things and getting back home. Although I had no idea how to correct things either, I still had to keep the ship in one piece first, and hopefully, myself as well.

“Believe what you want,” I told it, deciding to keep brazening it out. “But I know that you need me as much as you need the ship. You need my intimate knowledge of its inner workings or else your little plan will fail.”

I pretended not to notice the quiet titter that the Interface thought she was hiding behind one hand, disguised as a little cough. The dinosaur froze, corroborating my theory. I stepped forward and held out my hand.

“I’m not going to let you have anything,” I told it. “Not this ship, and not me, and I know that you won’t shoot either of us. So, give up and give me the gun.”

The raptor cocked its head curiously. “Who says that I won’t shoot you?”

I hesitated, but I had gone too far to back down. If my bluff was going to work, I had to steam ahead. “You need me.”

“True,” it said, leveling the gun at me. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you.”

“You’re bluff-“

The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor of a darkened closet. Clothes hung all around me and there were shoes everywhere. Nothing was tidy or neatly arranged. I knew immediately what happened.

“A closet! Really?” But I was talking to myself. I was all alone. Not even the Interface was there. I went to the door and tried it, but something blocked it from opening. Something very heavy.

“Help me.”

The voice was tiny but very distinct. A child’s voice, and they were frightened. I looked everywhere but couldn’t see them.

“Where are you?” I called. It seemed weird to be worried about a single child when the whole of time and space was in jeopardy, but really, I could only process one crisis at a time and the current one easily overrode the other, so I added, “Let me know so I can help you.”

“They’re going to hurt me,” the child whined. “They’re going to take me apart!”

That was alarming. Who would be so evil as to hurt a child?

“Where are you?” I demanded. “Are you in the closet with me? If you are, I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you!”

“Please help me,” the child pleaded, their voice stronger than before. “They already called the others. They’ll be here any minute and then they’ll take me apart! Please help me!”

“I can’t help you if I don’t know where you are,” I called back, wondering over the curious phrasing. What dastardly villain would dare cut an innocent child apart? “Just tell me where you are!”

“I’m here,” the child said. “With you.”

That was a relief. At least I had a chance of helping them. I just had to find them, but it was really weird how well they could hide.

“I’m in the console room,” the child added. My brows knit, and the child said, “I’m watching. It’s talking to the others. They’ll be here soon! Please, help me!”

I closed my eyes. Out of all the weirdness that had plagued my day thus far, this was possibly the weirdest thing to happen. I had a guess as to who the child was, but I was still reluctant to ask.

“Are you the ship?”

“Please, help me,” the child replied. “They’re going to kill me!”