Zane woke up with a crick in his neck and a warm body on either side of him.
What the hell?
He was not a spend-the-night kind of guy. The best way to avoid the whole awkward morning scene was to take off before the sun rose. No messy questions about phone numbers or next dates that way and that was how he liked it.
And these bodies… his eyes flew open.
A small hand patted his cheek. Wide blue eyes stared intently into his as a tiny voice said, "Bike yada me see yoga."
Zane closed his eyes again.
Last night had been amazing. He and Jo had talked for hours. She'd told him stories about her timeline, he'd told her about his version of reality, they'd eaten crappy MRE meals and laughed their asses off, and the sad look in her eyes had faded away to be replaced by a spark that promised to be hotter than the artificial sun that had apparently caused their first major fight.
And then baby Caiti had started to cry.
"What did you say?" he mumbled, voice rough with sleep.
"Yama me," she told him earnestly. "Me do beef ass."
Okay, she definitely hadn't said that.
"We're hungry," a cranky, sleepy voice complained from over his shoulder. "And we want yogurt. I mean she does. I mean me does. I mean little me does. I don't want yogurt. It's yuck. I want pancakes." Big Caiti heaved a sigh and snuggled closer to Zane's back. He could feel the warmth of her breath tickling the hair on the back of his neck.
"Yi dyke yoga." Little Caiti patted his face again, a little harder this time. "Yime do giddy yep, Dada."
Weird. This was his future. He ought to hate it. He ought to be running away as fast as his feet would take him. Not literally, of course—he had no wish to get trapped in 1947. But mentally. Instead he pushed himself up and went to see if his future self had thought to pack yogurt.
He had.
The next two days passed both slowly and quickly. Slowly, because they were trapped in the bunker, waiting out the time until they could zap everyone back to the future and save the past, but quickly at the same time, because there was so much to do. Zane and Caiti worked on the software for S.A.R.A.H., creating the programs that would let her manipulate the future to shape the world they wanted.
"Doesn't this violate causality?" Jo asked, late in the afternoon on the second day.
Zane ran a tired hand through his hair and looked up from the computer screen. "What do you mean?"
"You only know what to tell S.A.R.A.H. because she's already told you. Won't that create another time loop?"
He returned his gaze to the screen, studying his code. He wouldn't have any way to test it, no beta rounds, no debugging, so it had to be right the first time. "I'm hoping we're Schrodinger's cat."
"Doesn't that cat die?" Jo sounded skeptical.
Zane gave an exhausted chuckle. "Maybe and maybe not. You can't know without direct observation." He rubbed his face. "But that's not the point. It's quantum entanglement at work. As data, it can't exist until it's happened, but in quantum terms, it is and always was. And maybe it's all just stories I'm recording for S.A.R.A.H., not reality. We can never know the real truth, not anymore."
"That sounds bleak."
Zane grinned at her. "Not as long as we choose stories that we like. Dreams come true, babe. You want to be a millionaire? I can make it happen."
Jo snorted. "Never one of my fantasies, no. No one enters the army to get rich."
"What did you want?" Zane started typing again, only half-paying attention. He was interested, but he was also running out of time.
"Oh, I don't know. To be good at my job. To be successful." She half-laughed. "When I was little, I wanted five kids."
Zane's fingers stilled. "Seriously?"
She shrugged. "Four kids in my family, and I've always been an over-achiever."
Zane shook his head, but a smile tugged at his lips.
"What?" she asked. "What's funny about that?"
How many of him in how many alternate timelines in how many universes had screwed around with the timeline to make Jo happy? But now he know why S.A.R.A.H. had suffered the power outage that brought Caiti into being.
Jo glanced at her watch. "Are you done? It's almost time."
Zane nodded and shut the laptop.
Amy was running through a kata in one corner of the room, while Big Caiti and Little Caiti squabbled over Candyland in another.
"Okay, kids," Jo said, clapping her hands. "Time to go."
"Yay!" Amy immediately cheered, but Big Caiti's lower lip slid out into a pout.
"Don't worry, honey." Zane tried to reassure her. "We've got it."
She reached out to clutch the hand of her younger self. "Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." Zane crouched down next to them, his eyes meeting hers. The blue was so familiar and yet so strange set in the pixie face. He brushed a strand of dark hair away from her cheek and repeated himself. "I'm sure. There is no future where you're not my baby girl."
Little Caiti protested. "I da baby," she said, stepping forward, and trying to get between her big self and Zane.
"Dummy," Big Caiti said, almost fondly. She put her hand on her smaller self's head and nodded, solemnly. "All right, Daddy. We'll go home."
Calculations, timing, re-wiring… Baby Caiti had to push the button herself to go back to the time where S.A.R.A.H. would have opened the wormhole for her.
"Are you sure?" Jo fretted as the toddler disappeared. "What have we done? She could be anywhere."
"Not anywhere," Zane said firmly, quickly twisting the connections on the bridge devices together. "She'll be back in her own time. S.A.R.A.H. will have managed."
"But what if—" Jo started.
"If something went wrong, she'll still be in Eureka." Zane took a deep breath. He had it right, he was sure he did. But damn, this whole process was unnerving. "Worst comes to worse, she'll pop up in the wrong era. But she's cute, willful, smart as hell." He grinned down at the little girl holding Jo's hand. "Someone will take care of her, you know it. She could be running the world by the time we're born."
Big Caiti smirked up at him as Jo said, "Oh, God." She closed her eyes, her shudder visible.
Zane gripped Jo's hand. "We all good?"
Amy lifted up her hand, joined with Caiti's. "I'm ready."
Zane glanced down at Caiti. That lower lip of hers was sliding out again as she said, "I'm real."
"So real, sweetheart," Zane said. He tucked the laptop that he'd brought from the future under his arm, and leaning forward, pushed the button on the joined bridge devices with his other fist, tightly wrapped around Jo's fingers.
Whir, blur… they were back, in the future, in S.A.R.A.H. , with their older selves, just as they'd left them three days and only a moment ago.
"Amy? Caiti?" Future Jo moved into worry mode instantly. Scolding-mode would come next, Zane suspected. He ignored her, turning toward his future self, who was blinking in surprise.
"What do you know?" he demanded of himself.
"What do I—what?" His future self opened his hands in a gesture of uncertainty.
"What do you know?" Zane asked again, impatience edging his voice. Would he lie to himself? Had he lied to himself?
"Nothing," his future self answered, looking authentically confused. "We just sent you back. What happened? How did the girls end up with you?"
Zane blew out a breath. Hell. He'd hoped… but it was worth it. "Congrats," he said to himself, voice dry. "You did it."
"Did what?"
He held out his hand, fingers curling impatiently. "Tell me about the memory wipe."
His future self's eyebrows shot up. "Are you going to do it? Seriously?"
"We already did it," Zane said.
"What are you talking about?"
Zane shook his head. "This wasn't our first time with this plan. But we've got it now. I think, anyway."
"What?" His future self drew back. "What are you saying?"
Zane shook his head again. They didn't have time for him to explain, and besides, it was pointless. Ten minutes from now, his future self would become the person he always should have been. Well, with maybe a few tweaks of the kind that knowing the future could give you. He sort of hoped he'd been smart enough to become the millionaire he had offered Jo.
"Zane?" Jo asked, her fingers tightening around his, her dark eyes worried. "Is everything okay?"
"Tell me how to do the memory wipe," he demanded of his future self.
"It's a modification of Grace Monroe's memory sharing technology," his future self said obediently. "Just put this chip behind your ear and push this button on the control stick." The control stick looked like a tiny remote control for a television set. "It's set to erase four days, so you might have some momentary confusion but it should bring you close to the moment when you first pushed the button on the bridge device."
"I need more time."
"More time? Why?"
"I need a day in the past where I still remember the future."
"What? Why?" Future Jo left off scolding her children and turned to him. "The best chance of…"
Zane put a hand up and covered her mouth. She glared at him, eyes sending fury his way, "One day," he said. "That's all I need. We've been through this before, so don't mess with me, Jojo."
"We have not," Future Jo spoke through his hand, but Future Zane was already thumbing the control stick for the memory device. He handed it to Zane.
"Five days," he said. "That gives you one whole day in the past to do whatever you need to do. No longer, though."
Zane shifted his arm, so that the laptop he held was visible, and nodded. "This is going to work."
His future self rolled his eyes and handed him two chips to go with the memory control stick while both Jo's protested. "Wait, what—" started his Jo while Future Jo said anxiously, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
Zane tucked the memory chips into his pocket then grabbed his Jo's hand. He didn't wait for her to respond, but pushed the button on the bridge device.
Whir, zoom, that unnerving feeling of space swirling around them and there they were… back where they started.
A/N: I hope I haven't disappointed all three of you reading! You all wanted that conversation where Jo tells him about the other timeline, but I didn't have anything to say about it. I pictured it as a dimly lit, romantic bunker punctuated by a baby crying. I hope that image works for you, too. One more chapter, I hope on Monday!