No Guarantees
The air smelled of smoke.
He'd burned the pancakes. And Caiti was not pleased.
"Add more syrup," he suggested. The kitchen was a mess. Pouring flour from the bag turned out to be a bad idea: he'd managed to get almost as much on himself and the counter as in the bowl. And cracking eggs was a lot harder than it looked.
"These are yucky, Daddy," Caiti said sadly. She pushed her plate away.
Zane sighed. He supposed he could start over again, but he wished S.A.R.A.H. would come back online and make the pancakes for them. Although he supposed she might have something to say to Caiti about tampering with her memories first.
He poked at the mess on the stove, then picked it up. He'd dump this batch, and see if maybe a lower heat setting worked better. Who knew cooking required so much experimentation?
"What the hell is going on here?" At the sound of the voice, Zane turned hastily. Burnt pancake skidded out of the flying pan and onto the floor, but he barely noticed. Jo's arms were folded across her chest, and her foot was tapping, but her hair was down, her face was sleepy, and she was wearing a tank top and pajama shorts. The surge of lust he felt at the sight of the Enforcer looking so un-Enforcer-like was unmistakable. Wow, Lupo was seriously hot.
"Um, pancakes?" he offered.
She looked from the floor to his face and raised her brows. "Really?" she drawled, before turning to Caiti. "How did you get here?"
The little girl was resting her head on the table, but at Jo's words, she sat up, and yawned. "I used Jaime's 'speriment."
Hmm, Zane wondered what that was. It hadn't even occurred to him to question how Caiti had returned to S.A.R.A.H. after she'd left with her siblings earlier in the evening, but of course, he should have. She was much too little to be traveling around Eureka in the dark.
"And do your parents know?" Jo asked.
Caiti looked from one of them to the other and said, tentatively, "Yes?" And then continued quickly, "But you said, Mommy. You said it was okay. I asked if I could sleep with you and you said yes."
Jo looked blank for a second and then protested, "I was asleep! I thought that was a dream."
Zane couldn't resist. "Hmm, so if I ask that question when you're sleeping. . ."
Jo glared at him. He grinned at her. God, but it was fun to annoy Lupo. Even when she was all Enforcer-tough, it was one of his favorite pleasures in life, but it was even more fun when she was like this.
"What happened to S.A.R.A.H.?" Jo demanded.
Zane and Caiti exchanged looks. She looked guilty, like she knew she was going to be in trouble, and he suspected he probably looked the same way.
Jo didn't wait for an answer. "We need to call your parents right away," she told Caiti. "Where's your phone?"
Caiti's eyes got big and round, and her lower lip emerged just a little and quivered. "But –," she started in a tiny voice.
"There is no way that works on me," Jo interrupted her.
Caiti dropped the pout and grinned. Slipping out of her seat, she came around to Jo and took her hand, pressing up against her leg and looking up at her adoringly. "It works on Daddy, though. Please don't make me go home. I want to stay with you."
"It's the middle of the night," Jo replied. "If your parents wake up and realize you're gone, they'll be terrified."
Caiti frowned, and this time the pout looked real. "No, they won't," she said. "They have lots of kids."
"Phone." Jo held out her hand, and with a sigh, Caiti went back to the table and picked up her hand-held device from where she'd left it. She brought it back to Jo and handed it to her. Jo looked at it blankly, turned it over a couple of times, then handed it back and said, "You call them."
Zane grinned. He'd had a chance to look at Caiti's device a little earlier, when she found a pancake recipe for him. It was a tiny box with no buttons, and no obvious interface, just a couple of access ports. He would have loved to watch Jo try to figure out how to use it as a telephone. No surprise that she took one look and opted for an easier solution.
Ten minutes later, Future Jo and Future Zane were both awake and on their way to S.A.R.A.H., Jo was competently mixing up a batch of pancake batter, and Zane and Caiti were trying – not very effectively – to clean up the mess they'd made. It was an early start to the day, but it looked as if no one was going back to bed anytime soon. Zane was just as glad: he wanted answers to his questions.
"Before they get here," Zane murmured to Jo, glancing warily at Caiti who seemed to be absorbed in trying to sweep up flour off the floor, "What do you think about what they said yesterday?"
"There's something they're not telling us," Jo replied, not looking at him.
"Yeah, I think so, too," he agreed. "Any idea what?"
Jo shook her head. "If they wanted us not to know anything about the future, why so many people here to meet us? Or if they expect us to wipe our memories, why not just let us learn everything? And that single-button push plan sounds pretty risky to me: we don't know what kind of precision the bridge devices require. There's a chance we wind up in 1947 and forget all of this, so wouldn't it be a lot easier to just, I don't know, leave a note for ourselves in 1947, explaining what to do?"
"I don't want to forget this," Zane replied quickly. When they let themselves merge with their other selves, he wanted to keep his memories. He wanted to know about the faster-than-light travel, the changes to cars, Caiti's phone and her invisibility worm, and most of all, he wanted to remember Future Jo and his future kids with her.
"Neither do I," Jo admitted. She'd stopped stirring the pancake batter, and looked up at him, half-smiling. "I gave up on you," she whispered. "I let go, decided we didn't fit, wouldn't work, tried to stop loving you. And then somehow, this is our future?" Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and Zane didn't resist the temptation.
One step closer, and he was bending his head and taking her lips with his, and it was just like the time in the Sheriff's office. She melted into him, her body fitting into his like it was the other half he'd never known was missing, her arms reaching up and curving around his neck, pulling him closer and closer. Within seconds, he was hard and throbbing and the heat between them was like nothing he'd ever felt before.
And then there was a very out-of-place tug on his pants leg, and he lifted his head, breathless, heart racing, and looked down into Caiti's blue eyes, as she said, "I tried to wash the floor, but I think I made it worse."
He looked where she pointed and Jo, just as breathless as he was, looked, too.
"Uh-oh. Flour plus water makes glue," Jo said. "We need to clean that up before it dries." She pulled away from him, and took Caiti's hand. With a discreet glance down, she said to him, "You can wash the dishes," and with a reluctant grin, Zane turned to face the sink while he tried to get his body back under his control.
S.A.R.A.H. came online while they were all eating pancakes. Jo and Future Zane were having a friendly argument about the best way to make pancakes, an argument that ended when S.A.R.A.H. said, "You're both wrong: minimal stirring is the secret," which she then followed up with, "And Caiti, you have interfered with my programming for the very last time. I have implemented new security protocols that will keep even you out of my system software."
Caiti, mouth full of pancake, shrugged her shoulders and raised her brows impishly, while Future Jo said, "Isn't that what you said last time, S.A.R.A.H.?"
"Yes, but this time, I'm quite sure my defenses are sound." Future Zane grinned at his daughter, seated next to him, and didn't say anything. Future Jo, however, held out her hand, until her daughter sighed and placed her tiny handheld on her mother's palm with a sad look. Jo tucked it in a pocket and went back to her pancakes without a word.
Zane felt a pang of sympathy for his daughter and started to open his mouth, but a kick under the table from Future Zane's direction shut him up. Future Zane shook his head slightly, and ruffled Caiti's hair, then changed the subject. "So, all set to save the world?"
"Not exactly," Jo responded. She glanced at Zane and he nodded, giving her tacit approval to ask their questions. "Why so many people here last night? Do you want us to know what the future is like or not? And why are you trying to keep us from finding out more when you want us to wipe our memories anyway?"
Future Jo nodded, while Future Zane smiled again. "Caiti," Future Jo said, "It's time for you to go home. You can use Jaime's transporter again."
"But –," Caiti started to protest and then she saw the look on her mother's face. With a sigh, she slipped out of her chair and trudged down the hallway, shoulders slumping.
"We're divided about the memory wipe," Future Zane provided part of the answer.
"Not divided about whether it's a good idea," Future Jo added. "Every computer simulation we've run – hundreds of them – shows that the odds for breaking the time loop improve dramatically if we lose our awareness of the changing timelines. But . . ."
"That doesn't mean you'll want to do it," Future Zane told Zane. "The problem – the real problem – is that right now, you don't care about the time loop. Not really. It's not real to you."
Zane considered that. Yeah, it was true. So what if they were in a loop? It was a loop with incredible science and an amazing life.
"You will care later, though," Future Zane continued. "You'll care a lot. When you know that Zander's up for a Nobel, but he'll never get it, because time won't move on, then you'll care."
"When you know that Isabel's art wins her an early admission at Rhode Island School of Design, but she can't go because it's after the loop starts over," Future Jo added. "Or that –,"
"Art?" Jo interrupted.
Future Jo nodded, and laughed faintly. "One in every family, I suppose," she murmured.
"When you realize that our kids have no future because of the loop, then you'll care," Future Zane told Zane. "But then it'll be too late for you to do anything about it, except for what we're doing now – trying to persuade our past selves that we know better than they do. How are we doing so far?"
Zane frowned. Jo lips tightened but she didn't say anything.
"Yeah, I thought so." Blue eyes met blue, and Zane realized that here was someone who actually really understood every selfish bone in his body. Future Zane shrugged. "I know you," he said softly. "I was you. And a memory wipe? I've said all along that it wouldn't work, that we wouldn't do it."
"I could –," Jo started.
"No," Future Jo snapped. "No. Don't even think about that. That is not an option."
Jo leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms. Fingers tapping on an upper arm, she said, "Go on."
Future Jo glanced at Future Zane and sighed. "We have conflicting needs here," she said. "We want to break the time loop. But we'd also really like it if –," her voice broke, and she looked away, hand coming up to press against her mouth. Her brown eyes held a shimmer of light as if they might have filled with liquid.
"The loop changes," Future Zane continued gruffly. "Time changes. The future's not fixed, much less set in stone."
"If you forcibly wipe his memory," Future Jo told her past self, "He's aware enough to hate you for it. The memory device isn't perfect, and the memories still exist in the brain. In that time loop, he picked up an advanced degree in neuroscience and eventually restored his memory. It didn't break the loop, but you didn't get married, much less have kids."
Jo's eyes widened and she inhaled sharply. "So . . ."
Future Zane nodded. "There are no guarantees. In fact, we're pretty sure that this is the first and only time loop in which Caiti exists. If we could, we'd try to make you follow our exact path so that you – we – could have the exact same outcome."
Future Jo was blinking furiously but said huskily, "But it can't be done. And it won't break the loop. It's what we tried this time around, and it doesn't work. Life just has too many variables."
"So fix the past. Save Fargo. And then forget the future," Future Zane sighed.
Zane felt nauseous. No Caiti? He hadn't liked this plan to begin with, but he liked it even less now. He looked at Jo and knew that she was having the exact same thought. There had to be a better way!