Chapter 6

Honey, don't go

Don't leave this scene

Be out of the picture

And off of the screen

Don't let them say

We told you so

They tell me you love me

And then let me go

I heard the warnin' voice

From friends and my relations

They tell me all about your

Heartbreak reputation

- Being with You (Smokey Robinson)

=/\=

"I've swallowed the dose of trichronium," Donald said, "I'm ready to go."

"Good," Milton said, fiddling with the controls on the Temporal Enhancer. Donald was whisked away, to October sixth of 1981. Cairo.

"Me next?" Helen asked. She had a vial of trichronium in her hand.

"Yes. Just let me reset the controls, or else you'll end up with him," Milton said.

"Ugh."

"Okay, all set," he said, "and when you two get back, he'll go to 1998 and you and I will go get a time ship."

She swallowed the contents of the vial. "Y'know, it tastes a little like cantaloupe."

"Good to know. Enjoy April twentieth, 2010."

"See ya, Daddy."

=/\=

Otra was standing in her office, musing. Levi Cavendish was nearby, staring at his PADD. "Whatcha doin'?" she asked.

"There's one more paragraph of the Manifesto file. It's the third one, the longest one. No one's cracked it yet."

"Do you have anything yet?"

"Nothing," he said.

She was about to answer when her eyes rolled up into her head, and her chavecoi turned a dark purple. Levi didn't see this, but he did look up when he heard her body hit the floor.

"Boris!" he yelled into his implanted Communicator. "Otra's having a vision!"

"I'll alert Carmen," Boris replied as he began to run over to Otra's office.

=/\=

They met in Conference Room six, which was big enough for such a large department. There were alarms going off as the computers began to compile and analyze yottabytes of data that were coming in, due to the change.

"What have you seen?" Carmen asked Otra.

"It's funny. When Milton Walker had me, he would ask me that. It was every single day, I believe."

"Well, you're among friends now," Carmen assured her.

"Are you seeing anything, Marisol?" Otra asked. Marisol purportedly had a bit of Otra's gift but, the truth was, that was a ploy to get and keep her – Marisol, that is – employed by the Temporal Integrity Commission. In reality, Marisol had no more of the gift than Crystal or HD did.

"It is unclear," Marisol said cautiously. "It seems like, it is pyramids." Marisol knew about the missions regarding oil, but she did not know the details. This was to keep the Perfectionists' organization safe in case she was ever brought in for questioning. But it did handicap her when she was asked these kinds of questions.

"Can you confirm?" Carmen asked Otra.

"Huh, well, it's very, very unclear," she said, "it's like pea soup fog everywhere, touching, well, everything."

"Fog?" Tom asked.

"Well, it's more of a smoky, dusky yellowy-brown. I think it's pollution," the half-Witannen said.

"Can you discern a year?" Carmen asked.

"No, but there are Suliban."

"Is it a helix?" Rick asked.

"I think it's Earth," Otra said.

"Anything else?" Kevin asked, and then she was smacked with another vision.

Boris held Otra on the floor as she convulsed a little. Then she finally looked up. "Riots," she said, "in Paris and, I think it's Titan."

"Titan? When?" Rick asked. He was from there, and his and Eleanor's parents still lived there.

"2400s, I think," Otra said.

"What do the computers say?" Carmen asked.

"We're still compilin'," Kevin said, "it looks big."

"Deirdre, check for wiped families," Carmen said.

She began clicking around on her PADD. "Oh, man," Deirdre moaned.

"What's wrong?" Dan asked.

"So far, except for Kevin, I think everyone's family is wiped," Deirdre said. That is, as a result of what the Perfectionists had done, it was as if their families had never existed. The employees of the Temporal Integrity Commission were protected by a temporal force field. Even with their families gone, they remained extant. But that same field had protected the master time file, and it had been breached. So they weren't necessarily as safe as they assumed themselves to be.

"Confirm," Carmen said to Levi.

"Oh, uh, yeah," he began clicking.

Boris helped Otra up as then clicked on his own PADD. "Hmm, looks like my wife is unaffected. And she is still my wife."

"That's gotta be a relief," Crystal said. There had been instances when Boris's wife's destiny had changed, and Darragh Stratton Yarin had ended up nonexistent or another's bride.

"Uh, yes, it, uh, is," Boris said. For him, a bored, henpecked husband who was now worried about what his former chippie on the side – Marisol – might say or do, the news of his wife's resilience wasn't exactly good.

"Let's look at broadcasts. What's the news in the current reality?" Carmen asked.

Sheilagh clicked around a little until she found something. "Here." She projected the video image onto the wall of the Conference Room.

"Pope Gregory XXXII today announced that meatless Fridays are back in effect. All believers are advised to shop for fish or vegetarian specialties on Thursdays, so as to be prepared. Troy?" asked an attractive Suliban news correspondent.

The anchorman was a handsome human. "Thank you, Dellak. As all believers know, Sabbath is coming earlier this weekend, so that we may rest in anticipation of the Pope's visit to Ferenginar. Infidels," he spat out the word as if it were rotten, "are cautioned to remain indoors during the Pope's visit, unless they plan to see the light and convert, as believers will be out in force. Marci?"

Marci was his co-anchor. "And now we will read from the Book of …."

"Holy cow, that's my mother!" Levi exclaimed.

=/\=

The new Temporal Agent gave up trying communications and instead tried a code she had been given. But that wasn't working, either. She opened a hand-held Communicator she was carrying, for she did not yet have an implanted one. "Bryce Unger, please, on the USS Adrenaline." Unger was the head of the Temporal Integrity Commission. He was Carmen's boss, he was Kaiwev's boss – Kaiwev ran the Calafan Unit – he was over all of them.

"Speaking."

"Sir, it's Alice Trent. I was told to report for duty today, but no one's here to let me in, and I can't get Rajesh or any of the others to answer hails."

"Excuse me?"

She repeated what she had said. "Just a moment," Bryce said. He tapped his ear a few times to put her on hold and change channels. "Carmen?"

"Yes?"

"Did you hire Alice Trent? Or anyone named Rajesh?"

"No, and no," Carmen said, "what the devil is going on?"

"She's trying to be admitted. It's, this must be that she's a new hire in the new reality, in the timeline as the Perfectionists have altered it."

"How very interesting," Carmen said. She thought for a second. "I was considering her, in case I needed her. And I wonder if she's referring to Rajesh Kumar, who I had also interviewed. But you'll find one of our little changes to be interesting – the Pope is, I believe, Gregory Shaw. I interviewed him myself. He's an animal specialist."

"Not anymore, apparently," Bryce said, "We've got a theocracy. This will probably be a lot to fix. What do you want to do about Trent?"

"Hmm," Carmen thought some more as the rest of the department looked on. "Maybe allow her in. If this is the new reality, let's play it out, at least for now. Perhaps she can lead us back to where the divergence happened. The computers are slowly compiling. She might prove to be faster."

"I have no doubt that there is more than one divergence," Unger said, "keep me posted. Unger out."

"People," Carmen addressed the room, "we apparently have a new colleague. I suspect she'll be able to help us establish when some of the divergence occurred."

"There's gonna be lots of divergences," Kevin said, "that thing looks like it's gonna compile all night."

"Then let's adjourn," Carmen said, "and pick it all up again tomorrow morning. I know we've got a lot of changes, but – and I only speak for myself here – I am exhausted. I will bring Alice in and debrief her. I realize this is irregular but I get the feeling we'll have to wait a long time for the computers. Dismissed."

As the others filed out, Kevin took Carmen aside. "Do you mind if I wander off the premises?" he asked.

"You're a big boy," she said, "do what you like, if you can maintain a link with the computers. I don't really care where you are when you learn that compiling is completed, so long as you learn of it quickly."

"Oh, whew, thanks!" he ambled off as quickly as his near teragram of bulk would allow.

=/\=

Yilta was sitting in her office when the door chimed. "Come in."

It was Kevin. "I can go out tonight."

"Oh, and can ya stay in as well?"

"After dinner, yeah," he said, coming over to her and kissing her, "we'll go to my place."

"It's been a long time since I did that in any way but in my dreams," she confessed, "it was before my daughter was born, and I was still married to Darywev."

"You don't wanna know how long it's been for me," he replied, "I hope I remember how."

"Oh, I don't think you'll forget how to make love."

=/\=

Tom caught up with Rick. "I talked to Deirdre. She said your family's one of those that's wiped."

"I guess so."

"That means Eleanor is gone."

"Well, yeah."

"I wonder how Boris does it, coming here, knowing that on any given day, his wife could be gone, or no longer know him. It's unnerving." Tom said. And he didn't add what he was thinking, that he missed her, and worried if, somehow, she knew she was gone, and was scared or alone.

"I'm sure I don't know."

=/\=

But I don't care what they think about me

And I don't care what they say, no

I don't care what they think if you're leavin'

I'm gonna beg you to stay

I don't care if they start to avoid me

I don't care what they do

I don't care about anything else

But bein' with you

Bein' with you

- Being with You (Smokey Robinson)