Episode 1: Before the Storm by Naomi Kramer

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Copyright 2014 Naomi Kramer. All rights reserved.

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Note from the Author

If you've read my Bad Fuck collections, you'll note that the start of this episode comes from one of those short stories. See, I got to wondering why a naked redhead was snogging Wayne and telling him to hang around for seven years. This serial is the answer.

Episode 1: Before the Storm

Wayne browsed the science fiction shelves of the library, sighing.

“Read it, read it, hate that author, Star Wars crap, read that whole bloody shelf. Why, Lord? Why is the best stuff always in short supply?” he muttered.

He sighed, pulled out a Heinlein hardback he'd read at least a dozen times before, and made his way to a small, secluded reading area near one of the few windows. It was on the far side of the non-fiction from the fiction and children's area, so was usually sparsely populated and free of drooling, snotty brats.

Today, though, a naked woman sat on one of the low vinyl single-person lounges, legs crossed, seeming deeply engrossed in a Stephen Hawking tome. Luxurious red hair cascaded over her shoulders and completely failed to hide anything of interest.

Wayne dropped his book on his foot and yelped.

“Shhhh!” said the woman without looking up, “this is a library, not a pleasure dome.”

She turned a page. The tortoiseshell cat sitting on the floor next to her lounge shot him a dirty look and contorted to lick its side.

Wayne bent to pick up his book, fumbled it, but caught it just in time to avoid another assault on his foot – and the naked woman's ears.

“Oh, a second,” said the woman, looking up, “What year is this?”

Wayne's brain sent his mouth into an open-close idle cycle while it attempted to wrest a train of thought away from his hormones.

“I love you,” he blurted.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Uhhh… 2011,” he said slowly.

“Damn, I'm early,” she said, tapping what looked like a wristwatch and looking annoyed.

She shrugged, stood up, walked over to him and slid her arms around his neck. She slowly kissed his still-hanging-open mouth, pressed against him like jelly against its mould.

“Keep coming here,” she said, “I'll be back to fuck you in a few years.”

Then she disappeared.

****

The naked redhead stepped out of the liftwell and paused, looking left and right with a slightly furrowed brow.

“May I help you, Citizen?” a passing brunette enquired.

“The time department – has it moved?” she asked.

The brunette chuckled.

“They're always doing that. Something about the river of time overflowing its banks and cutting a new bed. Then they start spouting equations and I'm lost.”

“Er – do you know where they went?”

“Three floors up, on your right as you leave the lift. Somewhere up there. I'm not sure where.”

“Thank you!” the redhead said, and walked back into the waiting liftwell, wafting silently upwards out of sight.

“Was that Angie Chau?” a man asked, walking out of an office.

The brunette shrugged.

“Wow,” he whispered, and reversed into his office.

****

“Geek, we have a big problem!” the redhead yelled as she stomped into the Time Department.

“Angie!” someone called from a back room. “Whatever it is, sweetie, I'll be right with you!”

She rolled her eyes and sat in an uncomfortable metal chair, tapping her foot and looking at her watch, then away, with a scowl.

A young-looking man hurried from a back room, threading his way through lab benches.

“Angie! What's up?”

“This farkling watch! I got there seven years too early! Seven years! He was all fat and immature!” she said, shoving the watch in his face.

“Oh. That's not good, that's not good at all!”

“Damn straight!”

He unbuckled the watch from her wrist and took it away to a lab bench, clucking in concern. An hour later, to the tune of Angie's teeth grinding, Geek came back with a meek look and the watch.

“Our fault, sorry - the calibration was off. Enough to make a big difference, travelling back that distance. I'm so sorry, Angie, I don't know how it slipped through our quality checks.”

“It's not good enough, Geek. That could've landed me in the middle of some war.”

Geek nodded, looking sober.

“Yes. I'll find out what happened - and I'll check every single watch myself and place it in the operative's hands until I do.”

“OK. Thanks, Geek.”

“Live long, Ange.”

****

Angie took a slide to her apartment downtown, logged in at the doorbot and entered.

“Random, I'm home!” she yelled.

A tortoiseshell cat leapt onto the table near the front door and launched itself at her throat, but found itself caught to her chest and hugged.

“Beast,” Angie said with affection, and put her back on the floor. “I wish I knew how you manage to get back before me.”

She opened a packet of cat food, and poured it into a bowl. Random approached, sniffed, and meowed querulously.

“Yes, I know, the cat food's better in the past,” she said, shrugging. “We'll be back soon, puss. Until then, eat the fardling food, kapische?”

Random glared, then ate. Slowly, so Angie knew she was unimpressed.

****

Angie’s comm jingled. She opened her eyes and sighed. Why did the thing only go off in the middle of a sleep cycle? She shook herself awake, jumped out of bed, and stood.

“Answer call,” she said to the air.

Geek appeared in the air in front of her.

“Don’t you ever dress?” he asked, in a tone of curiosity, rather than judgment.

“Skin saves time in emergencies,” she said, and shrugged. “What’s up, buster? You woke me.”

“I need you to come into the lab right away. No excuses. There are some tests I forgot to run,” he said, and disappeared.

Angie frowned. Geek was the chatty type, and he was rarely rude. Which meant he was probably worried about spilling something on a non-secure channel. A call from the Time Department to her apartment should be triple-encrypted and, as the tech guys put it, ‘safe as pi’.

“I knew those secure channels were a load of hooey,” she muttered.

She buckled on a knife-and-tool belt, then pushed a bottle of water, a food-bar, and her tablet into a backpack. She held it open while calling Random, and the cat meowed and jumped in. No better security for one’s belongings, in Angie’s opinion, than a grumpy cat. They meowed louder than your average siren, could take the skin off someone’s face faster than you could say, “OW ow ow get it off me I’m dying here!” and had judgment, besides. Random could pick a dishonest person at a hundred metres.

Doorbot locked, Angie took a slide back toward the time department. This particular location was handy – only a single slide from her place, no transfers. Some of the others had been way out in the burbs. Not that transfers were difficult, mind – but it required a touch of agility, and on three hours sleep, she was feeling just a little bit fuzzed out.

“Bring on technology that doesn’t rely on sitting on top of a time-stream,” she muttered.

She reached the building, logged in to the doorbot, and lifted up to the Time Department on the seventh floor. Then thanked the gods of technology for silent liftwells… because she could see through the open lab door, leaning against lab benches, four men dressed in black, wearing balaclavas.

“Shit,” she murmured, and ducked out of their line of sight. “Shit, shit, shit!”

There was a locked door behind her – the only option to get out while staying out of their line of sight, apart from the antiquated ‘fire exit’ door that led to stairs which wound up and down for the entire height of the building. No one used them any more. Antigrav units were failsafe these days. If your antigrav failed, you were about to have far more serious troubles than getting smushed into a pile of bloody tissue at the bottom of a liftwell. Besides, all liftwells had mandatory mesh installed, so you could always just climb down if the unthinkable happened. But building regulations still mandated fire stairs. Bloody bureaucracy.

The sign on the fire exit explained that an alarm would automatically be sounded if the door were opened. The locked door behind her would warble a greeting if she logged in to open it. Either way, she’d be alerting the goons that something was going on. They clearly had access to secure areas, so she wouldn’t be safe in a locked room. However, there was the smallest chance that the ‘automatic alarm’ on the fire exit had been disconnected – or never connected in the first place. And if it did go off, it would cause a building-wide alarm, and the goons wouldn’t know for sure where it came from. Or probably even what caused it.

Maybe they were friendlies. No, not likely. Who dressed in balaclavas to go visiting?

She could try taking them out – if time agents were issued anything more than a knife to protect themselves with. Which they weren’t, of course, because otherwise they’d be causing paradoxes all over the place.

So, running it was. Of course, she could just try sneaking out of the liftwell… but the ‘down’ liftwell was right in their line of sight. She’d been damn lucky just to get in without being seen. Or she could… shit, sit here all day debating while her chances of being discovered rose ever higher! She slid over to the fire exit door and examined the sign. Screws held it onto the door. Hrmm… if the sign wasn’t there, maybe they wouldn’t even realise what it was. She swung her backpack onto the ground and pulled out the toolkit, patting Random in passing. She stayed still and quiet, ears flattened. The cat had better instincts than Angie did. As quickly as she could, she unscrewed the fire exit sign and stuffed it in her bag, along with the toolkit. Random shifted and shot her a dirty look. She put a finger to her lips, and received a dirtier look in response. I know what I’m doing, she seemed to be thinking, so just focus on your part, eh?

Angie slid the backpack onto her back.

“Showtime,” she whispered to Random, and opened the door.

Silence.

She slipped through the gap and closed the door behind her. Wow. She’d been right, they’d disconnected the thing. What a relief.

Then the wailing of a fire alarm started.

Claws pricked her neck.

“Mrrrrow!” said Random.

“Yeah yeah, I know,” Angie said.

She ran up two flights of stairs, and paused on the ninth level. That should give her enough leeway if they decided to use the fire stairs – as they technically should. And hopefully she’d hear them coming if they decided to come up and check for snoopers. Hopefully. The alarm was so loud and obtrusive that she wasn’t sure she’d hear a T. Rex thumping toward her.

A couple of minutes later, nothing at all had happened. The alarm was still blaring. No one had come anywhere near her.

“Random, would you go scout for me?” she asked.

Random grumbled and jumped out of the backpack, padding downstairs. She returned, ears pricked forward, tail high, and jumped back into the backpack.

“Mrrrow!”

Angie took that as a ‘coast clear’ and headed back downstairs to the seventh floor. She pulled it open very slowly and peered out. No one in sight. The lab door was closed, as it should have been earlier. Trap, or had they just cleaned up after themselves? Only one way to find out. She slipped over to the door, logged in, and it chirped and opened for her. She flattened herself against the other side of the wall. No one fired. She looked in – empty. Phew.

Random jumped over her shoulder to the floor, and ran in a low crouch toward the nearest lab bench. Angie stifled a laugh. She’d never get delusions of being in charge of the operation while Random was around. She returned at a run, leapt into her arms, and purred. Well, that was an adrenaline-inducing way to tell her they’d gone, but at least they should be safe to check things out for a minute or two before the fire brigade got here. If they got here, of course. They might not bother, what with the lack of buildings surrounding this one, and the fact that none of the smoke detectors had reported any trouble.

Someone groaned.

Angie threaded through the lab benches toward the sound. It was coming from Geek’s office. Geek was in his chair, slumped over the desk. No blood, no obvious injuries.

“Shit!”

Angie ran to the desk, opened the top drawer and rummaged until she found the medscanner that most people kept in their kitchens or offices. She flicked it on, ran it over the still body, and held her breath. The scanner beeped, and the display lit with one word: ‘DECEASED’.

She sighed. Geek had wanted to talk to her. Now goons had broken in, and Geek was dead. But what had he known, and why had he contacted her? Was it to do with the miscalibrated watch? She bit her lip, then searched the corpse as quickly as possible. Sure enough, her watch was in his inside jacket pocket, along with a datacube. Bingo. She scanned the office for other obvious clues, and shrugged. In the real world, goons didn’t leave handy names and addresses in clear text on a slip of plasti on the floor. Now she’d better vamoose before the firies got here. Or the cops, if they decided they gave a damn.

She crouched low and ran through the lab benches, checking the hallway for people. No one, yet. She ran out, wrenched open the fire door yet again, and jogged quickly down seven flights of stairs. Then displaced Random to get out her bottle of water and took a large swig before reassembling the backpack and swinging it back onto her back. Then she opened the door at the bottom of the fire stairs and looked out. It opened into a thick tangle of bushes that looked as though they hadn’t been pruned in years. Brilliant.

“Come on, puss,” she said, and started off.

****

Back at her apartment, Angie took out the watch and datacube and stared at them. She turned on the watch and checked its settings – configured for a jump back to 2018 – Sydney, Australia. That was the jump she should have made yesterday. It looked fine… but then, it had yesterday, too. She was a time agent, not a calibrator. If the calibration was wrong… if enemies had tinkered with it before leaving it in Geek’s pocket… she could end up anywhere. The cone of an active volcano in the Jurassic period. The middle of a World War I battlefield.

She placed the datacube into her apartment tablet. If it was going to blow something up or riddle it with worms, let it be the one that she didn’t depend on during field trips. The screen lit up:

Passphrase?

Damn, what would Geek program in as a passphrase? It must be something that both he and she would know, and that he’d expect her to think of in relation to him. His farewell. What was that overblown goodbye he used when an agent was about to make a jump? Ha – of course. She typed:

Live long and prosper

Geek’s face appeared on the screen, a ‘play’ button superimposed over it. She touched the button, and he started to speak.

“I hope we meet in person, but if not, I hope this gets to you, sir. I’ve asked Agent Red to come to my office tonight. I hate to suspect her, but here’s the thing – her watch has been recalibrated the last three times she’s been out. The first two times, it was just to bring her back earlier than she should have arrived. The third time was to completely invalidate her mission – or maybe to complete a different mission in the guise of a failed one. I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry to sound melodramatic, but if you’re viewing this and I’m dead or injured, then it’s probably Agent Red who’s taken me out. I’ve included detailed reports of the recalibrations, plus instructions on how to calibrate the watches – just in case something happens to my entire department. The enemy, whoever they are, already know how to do it, so I don’t think I’m risking too much. I hope I’m being paranoid, sir. Good luck, sir. Live long and prosper.”

Angie sat back and stared at the screen. Well, that screwed her up good and proper. Go to the brass with information that might put her in the slam… or go it solo and risk borking up the situation even worse than it was already.

“What do you think, Random?” she asked.

“Mrrr!”

“Oh yeah, food time. Gotta keep my priorities straight.”

One meal and a lot of thought later, Angie’s next move still seemed unclear. She took the datacube from the apartment tablet, and placed it in her backpack. Her preferred path was to dump the whole problem in the lap of her boss and let him deal with it. But if her boss had been compromised, she’d be playing right into the opponents’ hands. Maybe a half-half approach was better. Maybe. Whatever she did, it needed to be soon. Only people with the right clearance could (supposedly) enter that office, but sooner or later someone would find Geek’s body. And considering that she’d been the last person to log into the doorbots on building and lab, she’d be prime suspect number one.

“Phone! Natan Jersey. Call,” she said.

A white, androgynous face – like that of an antiquated store mannequin – appeared.

“I’m sorry,” it said. “Mr Jersey is not available right now. May I take a message?”

“No, you may not,” Angie said. “Override P-S-H-B-A-S-T-A-R-D.”

The face froze, then re-animated.

“I’m so sorry,” it said. “Mr Jersey is not available to anyone, regardless of clearance level. May I take a message?”

“No, thank you,” said Angie. “Terminate call.”

Well, damn. Who could she call when the lab was compromised and her boss was either dead or severely incapacitated? Those were the only reasons she could think of for him not either answering his phone or rerouting it to someone else. No one ignored an emergency override. There was her fellow agent Jorge - probably the only agent she knew well… but she didn't have his phone code programmed. Or, for that matter, his last name. She could go back to the office and wait for someone to turn up – hopefully someone friendly. She could call the cops – but they’d need access to the office, which meant someone with a high level of clearance. Or she could… let herself be framed for murder and worse. Damn. If she didn’t call it in to someone, her arse would be on fire soon enough.

“Phone! Scramble visual, disguise audio. Route through IP-blocker. Police, emergency.” A large, kind-looking face appeared above the desk. An AI construct, Angie figured. There was always something unnaturally still about the face that gave it away.

“Good evening – what is your emergency?”

“Dead man in my workplace,” she said.

The face disappeared, and was replaced with another. This one was actually alive, Angie figured.

“Did you say there’s been a death?” he asked.

“Yes. I’ve medscanned him. A co-worker of mine. Government department – we’ll need someone with N-level clearance to investigate.”

“I understand. Are you at the address?”

“I’m not. I needed to report to someone else first. Here’s the address:” she rattled it off. “My name’s Agent Red. I’ll call again when I can, in case your man has questions for me.”

“Wait, we need to know-”

“I’m sorry, that’s all I’m authorised to share at the moment,” she said. “Terminate.”

Right, she’d called it in, and appended her code name to the report, at least. She couldn’t think of anyone else to call, and mail was probably insecure if someone could get access to lab logins.

Random jumped to her lap and settled down, purring.

“Well, buddy, looks like we’re on our own here. Everyone’s gone quiet.”

Random purred and kneaded her leg.

“Yeah, I get it. Relax while we can, right? I have a funny feeling we’ll be ducking and running again soon enough.”

She put her feet up, leaned back, and fell asleep.

She woke to a paw patting her face.

“What’s up, puss?” she whispered.

Random’s ears were back, and her tail was switching madly.

A scratching noise was coming from the doorbot.

Angie stood quietly, snatched the watch from her backpack, and put the watch and backpack on. Random jumped onto the backpack. Angie took a deep breath, and pressed the button combination that activated the watch.

As the present-day faded from her surroundings, she saw two men in black clothing and balaclavas burst into the room.

****

A library faded in around Angie and Random. It looked shabbier, less cared-for, than it had the last time they’d been there.

“Well, that was close,” Angie said to Random. “Hmm… I think they had a skin taboo back in this period. Maybe I should be wearing clothes.”

She checked her backpack – nothing. Well, she could use the hide circuit on her watch, and hopefully blend into the background until her prey arrived.

“You came back. You actually came back.”

Angie spun around. There he was, standing next to a shelf of books, staring at her and shaking his head.

“Of course I did,” she said, smiling. “I’m a woman of my word. And I don’t kiss a man lightly.”

“So you’re some sort of… time traveller?”

Angie blinked.

“I didn’t expect you to figure that out. I thought you’d decide you’d imagined me last time.”

“I wasn’t sure… but then you appeared out of thin air again, and I didn’t hallucinate anything in the intervening time period.”

She nodded. Logical. As she’d expect from a man like him.

“What do you want with me?”

“To take you back to the future with me.”

He laughed. Angie frowned, puzzled. Why would that, of all things, be the statement that was ridiculous?

“It’s a movie. About a time-travelling teen. Before your time, I’m sure,” he said.

She smiled.

“Will you come? I’m authorised to seduce you if necessary.”

“Well,” he said, frowning. “I was about to say yes, but if you need to seduce me to get me to agree…”

She laughed and held out her hand.

“Come on, brave traveller.”

“Wait – why?”

“Can’t explain. But it’s vital to my organisation that you come. At least… never mind. It’s vital. We need you.”

He blinked.

“Sure, what the hell. I guess Heidi Klum will just have to wait on our dinner date.”

Angie paused.

“We don’t have to go right now,” she said.

He laughed.

“I’m kidding. Let’s go.”

Angie took his hand, then thought.

“There might be trouble when we get back. Umm… get ready to duck, OK?”

“What? What sort of –”

She pressed a key combination on her watch, and the library faded from view.

They materialised in Geek’s lab.

“Oh, thank everything happy,” breathed Angie, both because they weren’t in her flat, where anyone knowing the standard settings on a time-travel watch would be waiting right now, and because Geek’s corpse had been removed.

So, Geek had reprogrammed the defaults to bring her to his office. As a trap of some sort? For himself to use, in case he had to escape from her? Or maybe he hadn’t suspected her at all. Too many possibilities, too few known facts.

“Where are we?” asked Wayne in a quiet undertone.

“My workplace. Sort of. It’s complicated. You’re in the year 2105, by the way.”

“Oh wow.”

“Angie?” said a voice from the door of the office.

Angie turned.

“Jorge! Oh, thank everything it’s you. What the hell is going on?” she said.

Jorge frowned.

“What do you mean, ‘going on’?”

“The break-in? The boss being unreachable?”

Jorge shook his head slowly.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Geek walked up behind him, and stopped in the doorway.

“Uh… hi Angie. What are you doing in my office?”

Angie’s mouth hung open.

“Holy shit,” she said, once she could find words. “What year is this?”

END OF EPISODE ONE

Episode Two coming soon… all two of them. A time-stream split occurs, and future episodes are split accordingly into ‘Timeline A’ and ‘Timeline B’.

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