Orphans In the Black: A Space Opera Anthology Read online

  “You about ready to throw another wrench into my life now?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you. Er… I mean, naturally it isn’t my intention to spoil your plans and interfere with your life. No, that’s not true. I do mean to interfere with your life, it’s the reason I’m here, but I don’t mean for it to be detrimental to—”

  He raised his hand. “I’ve heard it all before. Let’s just cut to the chase.”

  She nodded. “Right, right. It’s really a very small task. Simple, really. Just outside town, there’s a park bench. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you the address.”

  Ruby twiddled her fingers as he slipped a small leather-bound pad from his back pocket and handed it to her.

  “Oh, that’s very nice,” she said, flipping through the pages.

  “Thanks. I’ve always found if I keep my ideas in something expensive, I’m a little more mindful of where I put it.”

  She nodded, eyes darting across the pages until she found a blank one. After a bit more finger twiddling, she took the pen he offered and jotted down an address, followed by a latitude and longitude, then handed the pad and pen back.

  “Please be very careful about the location. There are three park benches and I need you to be sitting in the middle one.”

  “How will I know if I’m doing it right?”

  “An old woman in a blue dress with white flowers will show up and ask you which bus to take, then sit beside you until the indicated bus arrives. When she leaves, you’ll be done.”

  “What am I changing?”

  “Obviously I can’t tell you that.”

  “Not even the immediate change?”

  She glanced aside. “I suppose… By strict interpretation of my intervention training, I’m not allowed to tell you, but all of our testing has indicated the knowledge of a sequence of contemporary events which, as a result of your action, did not occur… Fine. I think I can oblige. The woman, if not for your company, would have boarded the wrong bus.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That is as far as I’m willing to diverge from my training to tell you.”

  “Ah. Well, at least it’s a good deed.”

  “Oh, it is absolutely a good deed. It is the inciting event that will one day lead to you being thought of on the same level as Robert Kennedy or Luther Kravitz.”

  “Luther Kravitz?”

  She twiddled her fingers. Her eyes widened. “Forget the name Luther Kravitz. I… I need to go before I botch this any worse. Just know that I need you to be sitting at that location between 8:44 pm and 9:03 pm on January—”

  “Don’t say January 15th,” he rumbled.

  “It is January 15th, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s my sister’s wedding.”

  “I am aware, and I of course am deeply sorry that you’ll have to miss a portion of the reception.”

  “Why does it always end up on an important date like that?”

  “Had I not explained inflection points to you in detail?”

  “Evidently not enough detail.”

  “In order for things to change, things must change. If your action would not cause an appreciable change in your life, at least in the short term, it wouldn’t be an inflection point. It’s a bit like conservation of energy. If you are to affect such profound change elsewhere, that change must be reflected in some other aspect of history.”

  “I don’t know… That sounds awfully metaphysical.”

  “The more we study physics, the more we discover how meta it is.”

  “Do I get anything for it this time?”

  “I’ve already said, you will be praised as… One moment… Don’t tell in my prior meeting I bribed you to take action.”

  “It was more… payment for services rendered.”

  She shut her eyes and flexed her fingers anxiously. “What on earth will I be thinking? That isn’t allowed. Why would that be allowed?”

  “Maybe the rules change?”

  “Please don’t speculate about it. Please, just… Just try to forget it even happened. I don’t want to know what I did, I don’t want to know anything about it. I have to go.”

  She turned to march down the alley, then stopped and turned back. “Wait, have you agreed to do it?”

  He sighed. “I guess so.”

  She vigorously shook his hand. “Thank you. Oh, thank you. The future of human society thanks you for your service and sacrifice. And thank you for the sandwich and the iced tea.”

  With that, she hurried away down the back alley between the chemistry building and the administration office. Justin shook his head.

  “I’m going to miss cocktail hour… At least it’s not screwing with me too bad this time.” His lip curled in irritation. “And I’ve got at least one more visit from this lady. Wonderful. Maybe I can talk her into another gambling tip then. Seems like she gets more flexible on that stuff with age.”

  Justin checked his schedule as he hurried through the darkened hallway, past empty cubicles and a janitor just finishing his rounds for the morning. For the last three years, he'd been mired in middle management. There’d been one opportunity to get his own team, but naturally that was when Ruby had chosen to drop his third ‘assignment’ in his lap. His time in managerial purgatory was about to end, though. When he'd ended up at Westerly & Associates, it had been a small and rather inconsequential engineering firm. They didn't stay that way. From day one, he'd gone above and beyond. Every weekday and most weekends, he went through the very same routine. Like today, he arrived hours before any of the other employees to get a jump on his tasks. Through raw force of will and copious unpaid overtime, he'd built Westerly up from the inside into a force to be reckoned with.

  He set down his briefcase and slid a folio from the outer pocket. It had the details of a profit forecast that, if it proved accurate, indicated in two short years they'd moved from the tenth most profitable firm in the United States one of the top five in the world. He juggled a steaming coffee in the crook of his arm, attempting to read the last page of the forecast and tap in the security code for his office simultaneously. The graphs indicated what he'd suspected. The only firm that consistently outperformed and outmaneuvered them was Morrow Agency. There was no shame in that, though. Morrow had been number one for fifteen years, and had been his first choice when seeking employment after college.

  After his coffee nearly spilled all over him for the third time, he tucked the forecast under his arm and stopped trying to multi-task long enough to get the door open. The office was a large one, but it felt small thanks to the rows of file cabinets along each wall and the three large monitors dominating the desk. He didn't even bother looking up as he paced up to his desk and set down his coffee. When he finally glanced at his chair a moment before taking a seat, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  The chair was occupied.

  It was a profoundly old man, shriveled by age but utterly steely in his gaze. He was dressed oddly, in what looked to be one of the jumpsuits favored by the janitors. He wasn't even wearing any shoes. The man's skin was papery and mottled with liver spots. His fingers were spindly and twisted with arthritis. But his eyes were fixed resolutely upon Justin, and the set of his jaw was that of a man to be reckoned with.

  "Who are you and how did you get in here!?" Justin blurted, stumbling backward into one of the cabinets.

  "That will become clear momentarily," the man replied in a voice that was little more than an articulate wheeze.

  Justin grabbed the phone from his desk and fumbled with it.

  "It'll become clear right now, because in thirty seconds security is going to be up here, and if you don't give me a good answer, you're going to be spending the rest of your life in jail."

  "Ruby Tuesday."

  Justin froze, phone still in hand.

  "Still gets you, doesn't it?" he said. "I used to love the Rolling Stones…"

  "What's this about?"

  "This is about you, Justin. This is about the truth."r />
  "You've got to be from the future. Seems like everyone from the future speaks in riddles."

  "It's part of the briefing before they send you back. You're supposed to let the target fill in as many details on their own as possible. Minimizes 'contamination.' Not that anyone you've dealt with from the future has been terribly concerned with the rules."

  He stood, surprisingly spry for someone who must have been over ninety years old, and stepped toward a row of leather-bound booklets atop one of the filing cabinets.

  “Very smart, saving all your old booklets, Justin. They make for excellent reading.”

  “You stay away from those,” he said. “Those are my personal notes.”

  His visitor had already plucked one from the row. “I particularly like this one.”

  He leafed through the pages.

  “Listen, I really need you to start answering questions, or future visitor or no, I’m going to get the authorities involved.”

  “I’m one of the most powerful men in the tech sector, back where I come from. And I got into the office because I remembered the code.”

  “You… You’re not…”

  “I am. And I’ll thank you to get your blood sugar checked soon. Shouldn’t have put it off this long.”

  “There’s no way you’re me. The way Ruby talked about things, it sounded like she was from hundreds of years in the future. I’d be long dead by the time time travel is invented.”

  “You discount two very important things when you say that. First, the rapid advance of medical technology. Second, that Ruby Tuesday has some very good reasons to mislead you.”

  He flipped to a page in the booklet. It featured an address and a set of coordinates.

  “Do you remember this?” he asked.

  “Sure. That’s from the second time she showed up.”

  “Second time she showed up in your life, but the first time she met you.” He flipped another page. “And do you remember this?”

  Justin squinted at the scribbles. “Sure. That’s a note I made about a possible new polymer chain. I couldn’t make it work.”

  “Care to guess what stunning breakthrough Ruby unleashed upon the market two years after she met you?”

  “She didn’t.”

  “She did.”

  “But that polymer was impossible to synthesize.”

  “With contemporary technology. We’ve got better stuff now. Ruby ripped you off.”

  The sound of pounding feet echoed up the hallway.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said.

  The door, still slightly ajar, flew open and in stumbled Ruby. She was perhaps five years older than the first time he’d met her, and looking even more frazzled than the first time she’d met him. Her outfit was a bathrobe with a logo from a nearby motel.

  “I don’t know what this man told you, but it’s all lies!” she cried.

  “A trustworthy way to enter a conversation if I’ve ever heard one,” the elder Justin remarked.

  She jabbed her finger at him. “This man is an unauthorized traveler and he is threatening to unravel the very fabric of history with his meddling.”

  “Hold on, both of you,” Justin said, raising his hands.

  “I imagine he’s claimed to be you. He’s not. The man is an impostor,” Ruby said.

  “This doesn’t work out well for you, Ruby,” elder Justin said. “Take your ill-gotten gains and be on your way.”

  “Quiet!” Justin ordered. “Now I’ll admit, there’s every chance Ruby’s been screwing with me, but I can’t very well just take it as granted that you’re who you say you are. That much she’s right about.”

  “Then test me,” Elder Justin said.

  “Uh… I’m thinking of—”

  “Seven.”

  “…Right.”

  “Th-that’s no proof,” Ruby said. “Statistically, seven is the most likely number people can pick!”

  “Fine. I’m thinking of three numbers between one and a hundred,” Justin said.

  “Keep in mind, you’ll have to remember them for a half a lifetime,” Elder Justin said.

  “I’ll memorize them.”

  “You sure will. And they’re seventy-two, eight, and twenty-seven.”

  Justin blinked, then both his current and elder selves turned to Ruby.

  “Fine, he’s you,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth.”

  “No, but it does mean you were just lying,” Justin said. “Come clean, what’s this all about.”

  “I was doing what I had to do to ensure the future,” she insisted.

  “That is her version. Here’s yours,” Elder Justin said. “It’s true, you are crucially important to the future. I’ve seen some of the things I’ve done bear fruit already. But she figured out she could compete with me in her own time, if she could only make a few careful tweaks. The only legitimate mission back in time was her first one. Since then, she’s been surgically altering your history to benefit her, to hamstring your career to her benefit.”

  “If that was true, then why would I give you the information about the sports teams, hmm?” Ruby said.

  “Yeah,” Justin said, “If she was trying to screw me over, why help me out?”

  “Because she needed the rest of your life to line up in approximately the right spots. Both of her unauthorized trips cost you money, money that you would have used to ascend to the proper position to play your part. So she had to replace that money somehow.”

  Justin looked to her.

  “Fine. Fine, it’s true. But you’re not going to do anything about it,” Ruby seethed. “I’ve still got the ability to travel through time. I can simply go back before my last visit. I can throw your life into a hellish vortex of misery if you don’t live just the way I need you to.”

  “Whoa,” Justin said.

  “Relax,” his elder self croaked. “Face it, Ruby. I’ve run the same simulations as you. If you so much as show your face in the past any further back than your earliest appearance, thenhe won’t line up to the rest of his inflection points. I’m perfectly willing to assume you’d sacrifice the future for your own gain, but you wouldn’t endanger your own rise to power.”

  Ruby glared at the Elder Justin, fists balled in fury.

  “Like I said. Take what you’ve got. Be happy. And leave the past where it belongs,” the Elder Justin said.

  She released a hissing breath. “I’ll see you in the present…”

  With that, she turned on her heel and marched out the door.

  “What the hell is happening to my life?” Justin said.

  “It’s back in your hands, Justin,” his elder self said. “That’s the last time you see her until you catch up with her. Which is to say, that’s the last time you see her until you’re me.”

  “Now that I know she screwed my life up, can’t I stop her from doing it?”

  “I’m afraid not. The knot she’s tied is a part of my history now, so I’d really rather you left it alone. But more to the point, you found out about her meddling because of her meddling, so undoing it would remove your realization and undo the undoing.”

  “Ah… At least that’s the kind of time travel snafu I’m familiar with.”

  Elder Justin placed a hand on his shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, you have a pretty fine life, from this point forward.”

  He paced for the door.

  “Wait. Aren’t there any warnings you could give me? Disasters I can prevent?”

  “Plenty, but we’ve done enough. Leave history to its own devices, Justin. See you in the mirror.”

  Justin watched his elder self step outside the office and shut the door behind him. After a moment, Justin opened the door. His elder self was gone. He shook his head and tried to make sense of what exactly had transpired. When his barely caffeinated mind proved to be far too sleep-addled to process it effectively, he set it aside for future consideration. His thoughts started to drift back to the earnings reports but a notio
n struck him. He pulled the current booklet from his back pocket and clicked his pen.

  Note to self: 72, 8, 27.

  ~FIN~

  Joseph Lallo is a bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction. He is author of the fantasy series Book of Deacon and the Big Sigma space opera series.

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  GRAVITATIONAL PULL

  A SHORT STORY FROM THE GAIAN CONSORTIUM UNIVERSE

  By Christine Pope

  ABOUT GRAVITATIONAL PULL

  On a mission to investigate a stellar anomaly, Dr. Lina Golan knows to expect the unexpected. But is her growing unease caused only by the voices in her head…or something far worse?

  GRAVITATIONAL PULL

  The techs at the Gaian Exploration Commission told her she wouldn’t dream in cryo-sleep, but at some point Lina Golan realized they’d lied. She didn’t know for sure how long she’d been under when it all started—whispers of sound, broken bits of voices trailing along the ragged edges of her consciousness. Sometimes there would be silence, and she would think, somewhere in the small piece of her mind which somehow remained herself, that those phantom voices must have disappeared for good. However, they always returned, accompanied by flickers of colors that had no name, and strange scratching and scraping noises. Strapped in, hooked up to a forest of wires and sensors, and pumped full of chemicals to ensure that her body survived the long journey to a distant star, Lina couldn’t do anything except lie there and pray it would end.

  Which it did at last, precisely three hundred and eighty standard days after the mission launched from the GEC base on Gaia’s moon. With the recent advent of the Gupta-class ships and their subspace drives, which turned journeys that had lasted months into trips of mere days, cryo-sleep had mostly been dispensed with during interstellar travel, except for these journeys to the galaxy’s most far-flung spots. Which was all fine and good, except that Lina knew the Consortium wasn’t about to waste a Gupta-class ship on a mission with a very low chance of discovering anything of immediate value to the government’s bottom line.