“Nope. It’s not possible. When you enter a timestream, you anchor to it and stay anchored—once you’re there, you’re part of it. If you drop anchor, you can slip out of the timestream and come back, but you won’t run into yourself because you’re not there, you’re here.”
I tried to follow that, I really did. And I didn’t want to admit that she’d lost me, but…“So…you can actually affect anything, as many times as you want?”
“Not exactly. Since I’m anchored here, if I go fifty years into the future and stay there for a week, I can only come back a week from today. If I drop anchor and go somewhere else, and anchor in a different timestream, I can come back to this exact same day and not run into myself, but anything I affected while I was here is still affected. That’s where we have to be careful about paradox.”
“So why can’t you just do the same thing over and over?”
“For one, because it makes us really, really timesick.” She noticed my blank look and clarified. “Imagine every time in your life when you’ve been really sick to your stomach—every carnival ride, every storm at sea, every touch of flu, or—”
“Got the concept. Thanks.”
“Then imagine all those times overlaid, one on top of the other, so that you feel them both separately and all at—”
“Which part of ‘got the concept’ is giving you trouble?”
She grinned again.
You know those memories you have that seem frozen in time, like a snapshot? Even if you don’t have a picture to look at, you remember every detail. Oftentimes right after the moment’s passed, you know it’ll be one of those memories—everything seems to slow down, and that one picture stays stuck in your mind.
The second I felt someone Walk, the very instant I heard the vwip of the laser, I knew that second would be with me forever, the moment right before her smile turned into a gasp.
I turned, calculating the trajectory of the assault: It had come from behind me, slightly to the left. I dove forward, trying to get in close so J/O wouldn’t have time to use his laser again. He brought up an arm to block my first strike, and my second, but my third got through. I had to keep him on the defensive. I had to get him away from Acacia.
I couldn’t see her well, but the glimpses I caught when I was ducking or kicking told me she was still alive. More than that, she was doing something—her green circuitry nails were glowing and sparking, both of her hands pressed over where I was assuming her wound was, somewhere on her stomach. I wondered if she could regenerate. I hoped so.
“Target locked: Joey Harker,” said J/O, which w
as really more insult to injury as he said it just after catching me with an admittedly nice right hook. My back hit the ground again and I felt my ribs protest; I wasn’t going to be able to take much more of this, and I was getting a little tired of that being the case.
“How the hell did you follow us?” Acacia’s voice was remarkably steady for someone who had just been shot.
J/O glanced past me, to where Acacia was getting to her feet. He offered no answer, merely extending his laser arm once again.
“You can’t Walk through time,” she persisted, tracing the outline of a badge in the air. It glowed green for a moment, flashing an official-looking seal with her name on it before vanishing. “As an official Agent of the TimeWatch Organization, I order you to declare yourself.” I cast her an incredulous look as she limped over to stand beside me, the badge moving in front of her. Did she really think that was going to work? (Never mind that I’d tried the exact same thing, in my own way….)
J/O laughed. “We do not answer to your TimeWatch.”
“If you’ve stolen our technology, believe me, you will.”
“We do not need your technology, Time Agent. We know your very essence, and we will follow it anywhere.”
Acacia straightened up abruptly, putting a hand on my shoulder. Her circuit-board nails flashed, and I felt something a little like a static shock. “We’ll see.”
J/O vanished. At least, that’s what I thought had happened, in the first instant—then he was back, but the trees around him were different. The sun and moon were flickering like a strobe light; the ground beneath us was grass, sand, water, grass again. I clung to Acacia’s hand, watching the world around us change, watching J/O flicker in and out, sometimes solidly there, sometimes see-through, sometimes only a shadow or an impression, just for a second.
It was a little like punching it, except we weren’t moving. We were standing absolutely still, and the world was changing around us. The trees grew taller, then shorter, one was struck by lightning, then was whole and green again. I couldn’t tell if we were going forward or backward; then I realized it was both. A figure walked past me and then split into two; one went left, the other right. More and more figures began to form around us; soldiers, mostly, running and jumping or ducking and hiding, often splitting into two different versions, one of them falling and lying still, the other crawling to safety—and all the while J/O, flickering in and out, came ever closer.
I could sympathize with how Acacia had felt on Base Town, when we’d gone into overdrive. I would rather have sailed over the waterfall in a barrel again, even with all the stitches I’d needed.
Finally, finally it stopped. I didn’t even know where we were now, but I knew there was a bush nearby, and I knew I had to rid myself of anything I’d eaten in the last few hours. I would have been humiliated, except I could hear Acacia doing the same thing a few feet away.
I recovered more quickly, and was able to crawl over and rub her back while she curled there miserably, gasping for breath. “Are you okay?” I managed, and she nodded. “Here.” I pulled a little flask from my boot, uncorking it and offering it to her. She looked at me like I was absolutely nuts. “Trust me.” I took her hand and pressed the flask into it, again enjoying knowing something she didn’t. I remembered the first time Jay’d offered it to me, and I’d assumed it was alcohol; I guessed Acacia was doing the same thing.
She smelled it hesitantly, then took a sip; I couldn’t help a smile as her brows lifted in surprise, and her features relaxed. “It’s pretty good, huh?” She took another sip and handed it back to me, shifting around to use my knee as a pillow. She nodded, and I took a sip from the flask myself. I’ve never gotten a straight answer about what it was, and I frankly didn’t care—all I knew was that it wasn’t alcohol and therefore didn’t have any of the nasty side effects, and no matter how small a sip you took, you immediately felt like you were rising from the softest bed in the nicest weather, with the smell of your favorite breakfast in the air. You felt like you were ready to take on the world.
I finally took a moment to look around, not that I could see much. Everything was gray and foggy, covered in a thick mist. Shadows and shapes moved through it; and while it wasn’t the kind of mist that obscured my vision, it just made everything a little hazy. It was like looking at something through a patterned glass window: You could see shapes, but not make out details.
“Where are we?”