Shock and Awe

Prologue

Time travel created all sorts of complications. Once a person started to travel in time they essentially became an anomaly. Suddenly they were alive and dead at the same time. They hadn't been born, they had been alive for a long time and they were dead for thousands of years. But the average time traveller didn't think of that. It was the one thing that a time traveller should not have thought of because once the thought got in their head that they were dead and alive at the same time, reconciliation between the two extremes made the excitement of time travel unbearable. And then they went mad.

Unfortunately, there weren't many psychiatrists that dealt with mad time travellers. Normally the average time traveller would come a time where time travel didn't exist. The only people who understood time travellers were often the kind of people that society deemed insane. The conspiracy theorists. People who studied magic. Crazy cat ladies.

And sometimes, a mad traveler would step into her brother's office. They would be disheveled with a mad look in their eye, always the mad look.

"I saw my grave yesterday," the man said. "I saw myself get put in the earth. I don't want to die."

"Everything has its time," her husband would say. "Even time travellers."

"But I don't want to die." The man would answer.

"You seek immortality."

The man's eyes went glassy. "I do. I want to live. Can you give me that."

"We study quantum physics sir. We're not miracle workers."

"You made a city float, thousands of feet in the sky."

"Floating cities are quite different from immortal souls."

The man would then become despondent, and leave the office. The next thing she knew, she and her brother would hear of a man putting a pistol in his mouth. Rosalind Lutece, murderer of time travellers. Except she didn't kill the man, she just bestowed on him a simple truth. Floating cities were achievable but immortality was something that was further out of reach. Rosalind thought that immortality would be at the very least possible once she discovered travel between alternate universes but somehow immortality remained elusive. At the least it remained elusive to her. By all accounts, she and her brother died in 1909 on October 31st and yet there was a memory in her head of celebrating the new year of 1910 and 1911. She and her brother had read the papers that spoke of the great ship Titanic sinking. And that was even further from when she had died, almost three years. Time went on for everyone but Rosalind and her dear brother. That, in and of itself was enough to drive someone mad, but not her. Not Rosalind. This was how things were to be. No matter what her brother said, it was fate that splintered her across time. It was the why that kept her up at night.

Time went on, and Rosalind remained the same. She even looked the same come 1944 when another man crossed her path, with a sheet of paper that bore an image of her face and birth date.

"1860." he said.

"Beg pardon?"

"That's the year you were born in isn't it?"

"Yes. Why?"

The man jolted slightly at that. "Why? Because it's important. You're 84 years old miss and yet you look no older than thirty five. What's your secret?"

"Beauty cream. Who's asking?"

"Vita-Stat is. I'm one of the staff from the company. Ever hear of Rapture?"

"Never."

"I'd suspected as much. Almost no one knows of Rapture. By all accounts it doesn't exist. Not on any atlas that is. But you can get to it. If you know how. In the middle of the ocean there is a…"

"Lighthouse," Rosalind said. "With a device that takes you high up in the sky to the city of Rapture."

The man gave her a quizzical look. "Uh, no. Under the sea."

"Oh. A city under the sea. Sounds fascinating. When do we go?"

"Actually miss, the invitation is for your brother."

"I am my brother. My brother is me."

The man tilted his head at her. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"You wouldn't. It's complicated. As complicated as the existence of a city underwater that no one knows of."

"Miss are you sure you've never been to Rapture?"

"Do I sound like I'm lying?"

"No but if you've never been to Rapture you have a good idea about where it is and that it's a city and not a town."

"I like dealing with hypotheticals. I suspect that your city is in turmoil and that's why you seek my brother. I guess that you are on the verge of war."

"Vita-Stat does what it can miss."

"And what does Vita-Stat do exactly?"

"We make first aid kits."

"Just first aid kits? You must be a very important first aid maker if you come to us."

The man crossed his arms. "Yes. And that's all we are. So will your brother help Rapture."

"I've told you already my dear man, Robert and I are the same person. To ask him to help save your city is to ask me."

"Rapture is no place for a lady. Especially now."

"And why is that?"

"Because there's a war going on."