"How dare you?" Kim icily asked the man standing a few feet from her in the spacious, sunlit room.
She stood ramrod straight on a marble floor, head low, eyes blazing, fists clenching and unclenching. Her breathing came in shallow pants, her jaw locked and shoulders clenched tight. She couldn't remember being this angry in a long time. A very long time. She'd gone past red-hot anger and out the other side to intense, icy fury. She waited impatiently for somebody else to speak. Monique was nowhere to be seen; she'd been escorted elsewhere.
The small, well-dressed man stood at parade rest, apparently letting Kim's anger flow around him. His clothes were well-tailored and color coordinated, and Kim noted unusual anachronistic details: a gold pocketwatch chain, a neatly folded kerchief in breast pocket, polished leather shoes. Few if any people continued to sport the acoutrements of the long-departed 21st century. In the lucid region of her mind, surrounded by a molten nimbus of red anger, Kim found him very handsome, extremely vain, and excessively proud. He also had no fear of Kim, who obviously had the physical strength - and inclination - to break him like a twig.
"Miss Possible, I must apologize for the manner and timing of your arrival," the small man said, voice like deep, creamy silk. The timbre of his voice was far lower than she'd expected for such a slight person. "As you can understand, now that we have made a decision, we wished to discuss the matter with you at the soonest convenience."
Kim continued staring at the well-dressed man. "YOUR soonest convenience, you mean," she replied. "But that's not why I'm upset. I've been manhandled often enough," she glared at two large gentlemen standing unobtrusively next to a wide column near the curved wall, "that it doesn't bother me much. It's what you wanted to DISCUSS that I have a problem with." She took a deep breath and willed her anger back down, below the surface, where it would sustain without burning her. "How dare you," she repeated, "decide FOR ME what I will or will not do. If you have something to ask, then ask. But you will NOT..." she paused and lowered her voice back to normal. "You will NOT dictate to me whether or not I'll risk the entire future of the human race by travelling through time.
"If you want me to do something like that, you'll ASK me, and describe why you think I should do it. I might even say yes. But I do NOT take orders. Not even from the entire human population of this planet." She folded her arms decisively across her chest and waited. Tens of thousands of years of buried anger and resentment at shoddy treatment bubbled to the top. Her sea-green eyes were bright and focused.
Mr. Well-Dressed cocked his head to the side and smiled slightly. "Ah, Kimberly, how can you think such ill of us?" His manner shifted even deeper into obsequiousness. Kim thought him a latter-day cousin to snake oil salesmen, but with better hair. "Of course, we will be happy to talk at length. After all, this is an enormous decision, not just for you, but for everyone left alive. You must recognize this is far more important than your own indignation.
"We have all discussed this for several weeks. Please realize it was not a decision lightly taken. Much was debated, focus groups focused, experts wrangled with one another, and it was an altogether busy time. You should actually be thankful of the peace we provided you during your recent stroll to Seattle."
Kim could barely keep from rising to the bait. "Oh, I should THANK you for excluding me from a decision affecting my own life? How kind of you," she said with acerbity. "I could just walk out right now, don't think I won't."
A light chuckle. "Undoubtedly. But you must realize this is merely a polite conversation between sophisticates. We certainly did not capture or incarcerate you, I think you'll admit. My associates have been an utter vision of deportment."
It was true. Although in another time, another place, Kim would have termed them "shaven gorillas," or thought unfondly of long fallen Jack Hench. They had not touched or harmed her, hadn't threatened beyond their mere presence, which in itself was considerable. But she had absolutely no doubt they would have had no problem trying to break her bones if she didn't accompany them to Seattle's sole governmental building. Kim smirked a little at the the key word "trying". It would've been an interesting contest.
"So are you going to keep me standing here until I cave in? Is that it?" Kim asked.
Dapper man looked momentarily abashed. "My apologies." He snapped fingers without looking around. "Please fetch Miss Possible a comfortable chair," he ordered one of his knuckle scrapers. "There's no reason to be uncivilized."
He approached Kim within striking distance, and extended his well manicured hand. "I don't believe we've formally met. I am..."
Kim interrupted, "Corbin Smythe, Seattle Regent, and all around glad-hander." He raised a single eyebrow in mock surprise. "There can NOT be two guys of your description in this corner of the world," she told him as a chair was placed beside her. Another was placed behind Smythe, who sat primly.
Sitting reluctantly, Kim watched the hired muscle retreat back to lean against a support pillar. The wide room was mostly empty, at least a hundred feet in diameter with windows spaced all around, and the roof domed with alternating glass and chiseled stone panels. It was perfectly circular, with a raised dias about fifteen feet in diameter, elevated two steps from the main floor level. The marble was polished and somewhat slippery. It was a room designed solely to impress and intimidate.
"Although we've never had the opportunity to chat, I hope we can get past this unpleasantness," Smythe said in a less oiled tone. "You're right, we muffed it up a bit by excluding you." He looked directly into her suspicious eyes. "I'm sorry. It was my call, and I thought it would be easiest all around this way. It did produce some results, however." He held out his hand, palm out, thumb extended as far as possible. He was inviting a private data transfer.
Kim looked at the palm suspiciously. "And why should I accept anything from you? Just upload it to a repository somewhere."
Smythe shook his head, smiling that enigmatic half smile again. "You have access to the public debates and resolutions. This," he wobbled his extended hand up and down, "is more sensitive in nature. For your eyes only." Kim smiled at the anachronism despite herself. She held out her hand until it was facing Smythe's palm, dropping her mental block on accepting external data, but ready to snap it back into place if she thought he was trying to pull something. Her fingers tingled as Smythe's short burst crawled down Kim's fingers and into her neural net. What she saw was amazing.
Details on the proposal: Kim dove into the burst, saw flashes of how it would work, what planning had gone into the project, how far along the local techs were in fashioning the time device itself in the Seattle constructorium. She saw minutae of her mission outfit being recreated, her cheerleader uniform (sudden tears threatened to spill from Kim's closed eyes), the debrief on how and where to foil Dementor's plot. The math and symbols and technical aspects were well beyond Kim's knowledge, but she grasped the practical points quickly. Assuming the Outland colonist's math was correct, it had a chance of succeeding.
Kim could change everything.
She lowered her hand and kept her eyes squeezed shut. They really had done their homework, far beyond what was casually available on the wetwork. Somebody - or several somebodies - had laboriously dug through scraps of her old life, what little remained in Middleton and elsewhere, dug up the remains of Dementor's Mediterranean lair and scoured everything they could lay hands on. Maybe the couple who sheltered Kim and Monique on that night after they descended from Mt. Middleton had helped; perhaps a dozen or more people had boated to Dementor's isle. They spent much of the three weeks in unseemly haste, preparing, debating, planning, building.
Despite herself, Kim was becoming intrigued with the notion. But there were so many questions...!
Kim opened her tear-rimmed eyes and looked at Smythe. "How can I... be responsible for changing these centuries? The lives of everybody? Why should I be the one? What if it's the wrong thing? You can't just expect things to turn out rosy, even if the plan works out exactly right!" Half-formed objections spilled from her lips before she had a chance to marshall them into coherent arguments.
The dapper man smiled a Mona Lisa smile. "Of course, you're right. How can we be certain stopping Dementor will result in a better life for humanity? We can't, obviously. Tell me you haven't lain awake at night, staring at the stars, playing 'what if' just a little. Some of us have been playing 'what if' for a very long time, and we have a fair idea of how it could've played out differently, had we been spared Dementor's anagathic gift." He gestured to the empty room, and Kim intuited he was including Seattle, the world, the human race. "What right have we to decide to grab the stream of time and snap it into a different pattern? I can't answer that for you, but I will tell you that nearly everyone on the planet debated the issue, and the majority decided to take the risk.
"It is a very lonely planet these days, as I'm sure you've noticed." He sat back and laced his fingers together, cupping his knee and looking expectant.
"How big a majority are we talking, here?"
Smythe glanced down for just a moment, long enough to let Kim know he didn't care for the answer. "Admittedly, not by a tremendous margin. In fact, it was rather slim. But it has been double-checked." He paused for a moment, and shot her a calculating look. "The main objection seemed to stem from the thought that you may exert more energy on your, ahem, boyfriend, than on your mission."
The thought floating around the back of her head rushed forward. If she did this, she could be with Ron again. But only for a little more than two days. It was more than tempting, and for that reason she fought it instinctively. With an effort, she strove to keep her feelings off her face, without complete success.
Buying time to think, Kim starting talking about the first thing to come into her mind aside from Ron. "But the world, the old world, was in such bad shape. I keep hearing or reading that we were only a century or two from complete collapse - the environment, overpopulation, resource depletion, technology advances in warfare, weren't they all conspiring to keep us from surviving much longer anyway?"
Smythe nodded his well-groomed head. "There's some truth in that. But those doomsday predictions didn't take several factors into consideration, which I won't go into; let us just say it wasn't quite as desperate as it sounded." He rose suddenly and strode quickly to the edge of the dias, down to the main floor, and over to an open window in the curved wall. Looking back at Kim, he said, "Yes, this is indeed a beautiful world now, but don't you find it a sterile world, without a future? Don't you feel as if you're simply tending the machine until we give up and fade away? I know how hard you've worked to redeem yourself," he continued, ignoring Kim's glower, "but it's like preparing the table for a meal that will never be served. Wouldn't you want to serve the meal, whether it's on fine linen or in a cardboard dish?" He smiled at her from across the room, clearly pleased with his impromptu metaphor.
Kim wasn't sold, not by a longshot. But she found she was actually considering it, now that she had more information. But she wasn't about to let him off that easily. "There's a lot to think about, you can't expect an answer right now. And I'd like to see Monique." She crossed her arms and waited.
Turning back to Kim, Smythe walked across the darkly seamed marble floor, nodding. "Fair enough. Would you be interested in talking with our technical staff to answer any questions about the project that aren't covered in the data squirt I provided?"
"Maybe after I see Monique. And after I eat. And no goons at the door, either. I don't want to have to hurt them. Oh, and I need one more thing from you before I'll even consider it."
Sensing victory, the little man stood at the base of the dias and asked eagerly, "What would that be?"
Kim stood and walked slowly to stand on the dias above Smythe. She towered a good foot and a half above him. "You need to ask politely. 'Pretty please' is a good start. Foot-kissing is optional but scores extra credit." She raised her right foot and gave Smythe a nasty little smile.
Monique filled Kim's crystal goblet with more cider. The meal had been more than edible, it was fantastic - after months of foodplant gleanings, real food like bread, butter, honey, pastries, and even pie with ice cream was pure ambrosia. Like most latter-day humans, Kim remained a vegetarian, although the distinction was blurred by some of the meat-tasting foodplants. Kim hadn't eaten animal flesh in millenia, and didn't think she missed it, since she rarely ate it even before foodplants were common. Even the thought of butchering and eating a pig, for example, made her slightly queasy. The eating part, that is; she had no qualms in tanning hide for clothing, for instance.
"So have you decided?" Monique asked. It was the same question she'd asked at her house just before human gorillas eclipsed the sun in her doorway.
Kim swirled the golden liquid in her goblet, thinking. It was more tempting than she was willing to admit, even to her best friend. Ron's face continued to pop into her mind. "There's a lot of questions to answer. And I don't know if I have the right to take that step, to change everything. It's really confusing."
Monique didn't give up. She was tenacious, as always. "No lie there, girl. I've been thinkin' about it ever since the goon squad grabbed you and they stashed me in this kitchen." She patted her stomach and let loose a demure belch. "Hey, look at it this way, at least you'd have time for a little something-something with your Ron man." She grinned lasciviously and winked.
Kim surprised herself by blushing. Monique giggled at the redfaced redhead, until Kim laughed too.
"Think he'd recognize you? You've aged since he's seen you. Hope he likes his women mature."
"I don't think he's even supposed to notice," Kim replied. "I look the same - don't I?" She turned to find a reflective surface, and Monique broke out in giggles again.
"Girl, you don't look a day over 17. Thousand, that is. Get over yourself, you haven't aged a second. You look like the same ol' Kim, sound like the same ol' Kim, act like the same ol' Kim - well, mostly, when you're not grumping around."
Kim sat back and took a swig of cider. She hadn't really changed, and she wasn't thinking about physically. Her body had the same athletic form she'd had since becoming a cheerleader, but even her attitudes and speech pattern seemed set. She acted 50,000 going on 17. Monique was the same. Even though she hadn't really thought of it before, it seemed that more than just her body was locked when she inhaled Dementor's spray.
Thank God she hadn't had PMS when the spray was released. Or a cold. Or a broken limb.
A discreet knock on the wooden door interrupted her reverie. Monique opened it and a pair of technicians walked in. Kim could easily tell they were techs; the stooped shoulders, squinting eyes, skin pallor, and nervous twitches identified them more surely than a pocket protector or D&D map could have.
"Ms. Possible? We were told to brief you on the, uh, temporal shift project," the first one said nervously. He didn't come too close to Kim, nor did he offer to shake her hand.
Kim sighed at the familiar reticence. She waved them to the two remaining chairs, where they sat stiff-backed and looking uncomfortable. The first tech continued, "As you probably know, we've gathered much data about the time period and what will be available for you to use." He took his hand out of his pocket and held it palm up, where a small hologram sprang into existence. A diagram slowly rotated.
"You will be physically transferred to the past, where you will exchange places with your counterpart at the time. She will come here, and we'll keep her safe and unconscious until you return. That will take exactly 52 hours, 12 minutes, and 8 seconds. It's automatic and can't be stopped.
"You will be outfitted with the clothing you were wearing at the time," he went on, and an image of her purple and orange cheerleader outfit replaced the diagram and its squiggles. "You'll also have a backpack with your 'mission' clothing, which has also been recreated. And finally, you'll have your communication device..."
"My Kimmunicator!" Kim squealed, delighted at seeing the small hologram. She hadn't held one for literally ages.
The tech cleared his throat. "Indeed. The device will have several additional functions not available in the original; you will get a full tech briefing on its uses. And finally, we have your grappler device." The hairdryer-shaped hologram replaced the Kimmunicator over his palm.
"You will have 52 hours, 12 minutes, and 8 seconds to complete your mission. Professor Dementor will release his spray during that time. We cannot send you any further back than that cusp event, but we'll try to give you as much lead time as possible in order to travel to the professor's laboratory. After the time is up, you will automatically be brought back into the future, and your previous self returned to her time." He paused for a moment, and looked at Kim directly for the first time.
"Now, you realize that if you are successful, this world will be extremely different than the one you left, correct? You will absolutely come back to this time, but it will not be filled with immortal humans. In fact, you will most likely be the only immortal person left, if not the only human." The other tech nudged the first and gave him a meaningful glare, which the first tech ignored. "No matter what, you will continue to survive, assuming there's oxygen and food and water available. But since time will have changed, nothing else will be the same. Do you understand this?"
Kim looked at Monique. She hadn't thought it this far through. Success, yes... a chance to provide her younger self the opportunity to marry Ron, to have children, to age, to spoil her grandchildren, to watch the world progress and change and grow... but at the cost of everything she'd come to know, including Monique. Elder Kim would forever walk the earth, surrounded by who knew what, circa AD 52,000.
Monique gave Kim a stern look. "Do what you've gotta, girl. I'll support you."
Kim flung her arms around her friend and hugged her hard. "You're one of a kind, Mon."
"Ain't I just," her friend hugged her back.
The techs both cleared their throats, clearly eager to discharge their responsibility and leave. Kim let her friend go and sat back down. "OK, assuming I agree to go, and that I spoil Dementor's plan, I snap back to here, but here isn't here. Got it. What else?"
"There will be no way to go back and try again."
Kim smiled sardonically. "Kinda figured that one myself."
The tech stood, anticipating departure. "I was also told to inform you that the colonists will not have gone, so there's nothing you can or should do to alter that," he said quickly. He sidled toward the door. "Reg, please give Ms. Possible the remaining brief material," and he slipped out the door.
The second tech held up his hand, palm out, and Kim accepted the squirt. But after it was finished, the pale tech sat for a moment before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a small cloth sack. Upending it, he spilled a pair of ornate bracelets and two medical injectors onto the table. The bracelets were beautiful, but clearly technical in nature, with circuits and other gadgetry visible under a semitransparent coating. The injectors were crude, since humanity had no need of preventative medicine or antibiotics. There weren't even drug addicts anymore, their bodies couldn't process drugs and provide the high they sought, so syringes were a thing of the distant past. These devices were more sophisticated than a simple syringe, but not by much.
"What's this?" Kim asked, puzzled.
The tech indicated the injectors. "These are filled with a preventative formula to resist the anagathic spray," he told her. Wow, thought Kim. "The do not reverse the effects of the anagathic spray after being inhaled, but if taken before anagathic inhalation, it can protect a person from the immortality and sterility effects. The subjects will remain mortal and be able to bear children, even if they inhale the anagathic spray later." He paused again, looking at the closed door as if he were sharing a deep secret. "If you find things not going well, you can find a man and woman, inject them, and use the cuffs to put them into stasis," he whispered. "The stasis cuffs will last at least until the present time, fifty thousand years, so find a good place to stash them. Remember, this is only as a last resort. I'm not even supposed to be giving them to you." Glancing nervously around the small room, he abruptly stood and opened the door, stepped through, and closed it while Kim and Monique sat open-mouthed.
Monique recovered first. "Trippy."
"Totally."
Kim stood in front of Corbin Smythe's large walnut desk. The spacious office was located one floor below the circular room where Kim's first interview was conducted, and floor to ceiling windows provided a spectacular view of a very domesticated, rural and demure Seattle. Kim glanced at it and wondered if she were doing the right thing. "I'll do it."
Smythe looked delighted. Kim couldn't quite figure out what he was getting out of it. After all, she would be destroying his rule, his domain, in addition to all the lives lived for more than 50,000 years.
"Spectacular," his low voice intoned. "We'll have you ready in no time. The device is ready now, and you can go tomorrow morning, after being briefed."
Kim walked to the glass and stared at the small city. No roads, no cars, no pollution. No hustle, no bustle. A sense of purpose, yes, the inhabitants of the city walked with a proud stride, but it was deliberate, measured. Nothing important enough to hurry for. No impending mortality to provide a sense of desperation or urgency.
No children.
In the end, that was enough to push Kim to accepting the mission. Seeing Ron was certainly incentive, and she had big plans for that young man. She'd also secretly spent some time accessing the wetwork and storing as much data about starship design as her internal wetware could handle, and a tiny little plot was percolating in the back of her mind. If nothing else worked out. But it was the thought of children that tipped the balance.
After a few empty pleasantries, Smythe's assistant ushered Kim from his office. Stopping by the constructorium, she was briefed on Dementor's lair: the known layout, henchmen corps strength, traps, and gadgets like his energy collector, bondo-balls, transportulator, and of course his anagathic concentrate. The helpful people there also provided her with a backpack containing her clothing and gadgets. Kim had a vivid sense of deja vu on looking at the black and khaki outfit, the baggy pants, the smooth grappling gun, the shiny Kimmunicator. It had been thousands and thousands of years since she'd worn anything mass produced, but the intervening years seemed to fade into inconsequence when she took the soft material into her hands. She rubbed the rough khaki against her cheek, remembering the texture, even the smell. Kim didn't notice the odd looks she received, so intent was she on reminiscing.
Walking with Monique at dusk, she toted the bulging backpack and drank in the gorgeous sunset over Puget Sound. If things went according to plan, this was the last sunset she'd see in this version of reality. The last time she'd walk with Monique to her cozy little house on a hill under the oak trees.
"Monique, I..." she stopped, unsure how to continue, how to tell her friend how much she treasured her.
Standing in deepening dusk, Monique shushed Kim. "I know. Me too. Don't get sloppy on me here, 'k?"
Together, the two friends watched stars appear in the crystal clear night, until a chill drove them inside for the evening.
The chair was shaped like a gynecologist's chair, but without the legs spread quite so far apart. That was the first thing Kim thought on seeing the time travel device. It combined less pleasant aspects of some other torture devices she'd seen, too.
Kim hoisted her backpack and settled into the reclining device. A pointy antenna in an inverted saucer was brought down to point at her midriff, now exposed in a cheerleading costume. There's gotta be a more dignified way of doing this, she grumped.
Monique stood at her side, and held Kim's hand. "Do it right, we'll love you for it."
Kim forced a smile. "You won't even know I did anything," she reminded her friend.
"So what's new, then?" Monique asked. "Hey, one thing... when you see Ron, remember he's young, not like we are. Treat him careful. Remember he's your other half."
Kim, not quite understanding, said, "Well, duh, of course he is. I miss him like you can't believe."
"Just remember he's not something to protect. He's gonna want to help you, he's part of your team."
She wasn't sure what her friend was getting at, so she just nodded and gripped tightly until a technician sidled between them and announced it was time.
"Ready?" Monique asked her, backing away.
"I dunno, I've never travelled through time before," she said.
Monique laughed. "But if you had, you wouldn't remember it, would you? Catch 22!" She sobered, and said one parting word before backing out the door.
"Goodbye."
Kim squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then resolutely opened them and gazed at the thing pointing at her stomach. Gripping the arms of her chair, she listened to the archaic countdown, waiting and dreading it being completed.
"Five, four, three, two, one, ze..."