The Time Travel Chronicles (42 page)

She shook her head. She had no idea what it was, but she knew it wasn’t
safe
. “No. I don’t think it is.”

That stranger had been covered in blood. He’d begged her not to move. He’d acted like it was dangerous.

Her father picked his way back to her side. “Juniper, this is our escape.”

She sat on the nearest flat rock, with her back to the weird light. “How can
that
be an escape?”

He sat beside her. “My colleagues found a way to open wormholes and, more importantly,
keep
them open. They’re working on opening them all over the world.”

Juniper stared at the place where the darkening sky touched the sea. “Wormhole to what?”

“The past.” Her father’s voice held a smile. “They’ll send us all back. To a time when the Earth was safe. We’ll live out our lives centuries before the planet dies.”

She whipped her head to glare at him. That was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
That
was the last-minute solution? “So, what? We can overpopulate the planet sooner? We can kill it faster? So we can disappear before the end and let our
children
deal with it?”

“No.” His smile faded, replaced by a terrible sadness. “The wormholes all go back to the same day in 1996, before things got really bad. So we can fix our mistakes before it’s too late.”

“How will we know if it works?” she asked, her voice softer. Out of the corner of her eye, the swirl of blue and pink beckoned.

He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “I’m not sure. Maybe one day we’ll wake up and the future will stretch before us, unblemished. Our history books will be rewritten, talking of how the problem of the dying Earth was fixed two centuries ago. Or maybe things will change in small ways, each day a new triumph shared with the world.” He took a breath, staring out over the ocean as if the answer called to him. Just like in Juniper’s dreams, when her mother called to her.

“Maybe we’ll leave before the world is fixed, and we’ll never know for sure.”

Juniper shook her head. “What did you do, Dad? Pay your colleagues to open a wormhole here?” Would it be yet another thing the town hated them for? Or would their attitudes change, once they knew there was an escape route so close?

“I helped fund their research. I’ve been funding them for twenty years. This is one of the first, but there are wormholes elsewhere already. People have already begun the exodus. Scientists first. A few politicians to help appeal to the leaders in control of policy.”

“Why has there been nothing on the news?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure there will be soon. I thought they were months away from expanding the program. There probably hasn’t been time to get the approvals to announce anything yet.”

Juniper glanced back at the swirling light. Shadows moved, but she couldn’t tell if they were the shadows of trees in the here and now, or the trees beyond. In the past, if her father was to be believed.

Soon night would swallow the beach, the wormhole, everything.

She thought of the blood covering the stranger’s hands. “What if I don’t want to go?”

Her father met her gaze, his expression hidden by the lengthening shadows. “Now that you know, it will be a leap of faith either way.”

* * *

The next morning, Juniper returned to the beach. When she asked her father when he planned to use the wormhole, he’d given her no specific answer. “When we need to,” was all he said. She didn’t know if that meant days, weeks, months…or hell, the moment the sky scorched the Earth and they were left running from the last toxic rays that would kill them all.

She brushed away the histrionic thought. No one thought the world would explode in a burst of light or anything like that. The weather would keep getting more extreme, the earthquakes and storms and climate less and less tenable for human life. Resources would disappear, and people would keep killing each other for food and water until nothing and no one was left.  Some areas would survive years longer, but the march of destruction was inexorable. Inevitable. Most of Africa and South America had already been abandoned, now peopled only by ghosts.

When Juniper reached the wormhole, she stopped exactly where she’d stood when she’d seen the man the day before. She studied the slice of beach and trees visible through the circle of light. Looking closely now, she could tell the beach wasn’t quite the same. The trees were scrubbier, shorter. The beach had sand instead of rocks.

The smell wasn’t as bad today, but she could still catch eddies of death every time the wind shifted.

“Hello?” she called, her voice a nervous warble.

Nothing moved except the trees, ruffled by the faintest breeze.

For a long time, Juniper looked at the swath of beach and wondered if that tiny slice of the past would be her future. Just the thought made her head ache. How would this scheme
not
end in disaster? No one had traveled through time before. Surely the scientists didn’t even know how long the wormholes would stay open. What if this was one of those times, rife in human history, where a well-meaning genius created something he didn’t fully understand, only to expose the world to an even greater danger?

The gun.

The nuclear bomb.

Genetic modification.

The Internet.

How could
time travel
be the right answer?

Then a garbled voice came out of nowhere.  “Hello?”

Juniper screamed.

Slowly, the man materialized before her. He wore the same shirt, the same faded pants.

Something – maybe the angle of the morning light – made his features a little clearer. He had dark, shaggy hair, deeply tanned skin like a fisherman, and a skinny, wiry body.

“Don’t come any closer,” he yelled. “We don’t want you here.”

“Who are you?” Juniper asked. She held her hands up to show him she wasn’t moving closer.

His eyes widened. “You can hear me?”

Her hands trembled a little as she lowered them. Had he said the same thing to her yesterday? Why did this conversation feel so familiar?

“My name is Juniper Young. Who are you?” She stepped a little closer, just to hear him better. His voice still sounded distant, filtered through…well, filtered through years, she supposed.

“No! Don’t walk through. It’ll kill you.” The man’s eyes were wide with terror.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, yelling too. Maybe he hadn’t heard her other questions. “It’s supposed to be safe. It’s our escape route.”

“You have to find a way to stop it!” he said. A shout echoed behind him. “All the bodies….they just keep coming. People pouring through the nothing gates, screaming as they fall. I don’t know if you’re aliens or what, but you can’t come here. It’s killing you!”

Juniper’s feet shifted, as if the world itself rocked instead of her own shock, driving her to her knees. Her lungs worked madly, but she could hardly catch a wisp of air.

“It’s killing us…? No.” She shook her head. It couldn’t be. As nuts as it was, this was supposed to be the solution. She glanced up at the man. He was still standing there, but he kept glancing to his side. In the distance, she thought she could hear the screams. “Has no one survived?”

He didn’t say anything, but she could see the answer in his eyes.

* * *

The world hadn’t changed yet because no one had survived. The truth roiled through her veins, as hot and hopeless as poison.

So many people crossing that line of light with hope in their hearts, only to be torn apart. The scientists and politicians….the bright minds that were supposed to
fix
the Earth before any of this was even necessary, and they were all dead.

Juniper sat at the edge of the water, clasping her shaking hands to her chest. She had to tell her father. She had to warn him. They couldn’t let another person cross the threshold to certain death.

There is no escape.

The Earth would die, and the human race with it.

For the first time, as Juniper stared at the horizon, she felt the flood of adrenaline as her body fought against the truth. They would die.
She
would die.

Her heart beat faster, so hard she could feel it fluttering within her chest. Her breath heaved in and out, each sip of air a gift, precious as her mother’s soft hands on her face. The sun – the deadly sun – burned against her forehead, illuminating everything.

Maybe…

Maybe.

She stood up on trembling legs, the pebbled beach slipping under her feet like the minutes, hours, the few short moments she had left. Even years would feel like moments when they were the last she’d have.

But maybe…

She took her place on the other side of the wormhole.

“Hey!! Hello there! Anyone?” she shouted. Over and over. As loud as she could.

Eventually, the same man returned. This time, his arms and shirt bore streaks of blood.

“We’re not aliens!” she screamed. “We’re people, just like you. We’re your descendants, and we’re trying to escape before the planet dies.”

The man stared at her, lips parted. She couldn’t tell if he’d heard. But she kept talking, babbling really, a sense of urgency driving her words.

“Humans kill the Earth. We kill
ourselves.
Can you hear me? Our one chance to stop it, to save this future, is to go back. All of those people trying to get through…they want to help you turn the tide. They’re trying to change the future.”

The man tugged at the hem of his blood-soaked shirt. “The…the future. You’re from the future?”

Juniper nodded. Maybe if she could explain what was happening, how
real
the end of the world was, maybe it wouldn’t matter that the wormhole didn’t work. Maybe the knowledge itself would be enough to change the world.

The man studied her for a long moment, his face framed by the bluish emerald of the wormhole. “Don’t go anywhere.” Then he turned. Just before he disappeared from view, something glinted in his hand.

A knife.

Juniper staggered back a step. Why was he carrying a weapon? Did he think the poor dying people coming through the wormholes were dangerous? Who else was with him on the beach?

A darker, quieter voice slid through her mind like an oil spill.
What if he’d lied?

When the man returned, he wasn’t alone. Another man, bulky in a flannel shirt, his face shadowed by a baseball cap, stood beside him.

Something in the stranger’s face had changed; his fear, the horror she’d seen so clearly, had been replaced by narrow-eyed calculation.

“You say the Earth is dying, and there’s a way to stop it before it’s too late,” the first man said.

She nodded. In every history book in the world, the downfall of the Earth had been spelled out. Every schoolchild knew what their ancestors had done. And what would have fixed it, if only they’d begun in time.

“Then come on through, and prove it,” the man’s burly companion said.

Juniper took another step back. “You said the wormhole was killing everyone who went through. I can’t—”

“Not the nothing gate,” the man said, his voice gruff. “
I’m
killing everyone who comes through.”

Bile rose in her throat. “Why would you do that?”

Her stranger ran a hand through his hair. He was still holding the knife in his other hand. Surely he wasn’t innocent either. But his face didn’t hold the same conviction as his companion’s. “This morning, people started falling through the air from nothing.  From
nothing.
What would you do?”

“I wouldn’t
kill
them!” she shouted.

“We thought you were aliens. An invading army. You dropped from nowhere, screaming, and then started demanding things… The first to come wanted to speak to our leaders. Ordered us about.
Threatened
us.” The burly man tipped his head up to meet her eyes. His surety didn’t waver.

This is why the Earth is dying.

Juniper felt tears build behind her eyes. So many secrets. No one willing to tell the truth. No one willing to listen. She couldn’t keep the groan of disgust from her lips.

“This is your chance to educate us,” her stranger said. “Your
one
chance. You tell us – you show us – what’s really going on, and we’ll spare your people.”

“I have to get my father—” she started.

“You come now, or never,” the hulking one said. He had blood on him too, blending in with the red squares of plaid flannel. “We can’t have you warning anyone. Think what you want, but we have no desire for a war. We’ll protect our own, no matter what.”

Juniper looked down the beach, knowing her father was at work, praying he’d walk toward her anyway. She
had
to warn him. If these men were lying and the wormhole killed people, she had to stop the exodus. And if they were lying about letting
her
live…about listening to her…