PROMPT: Two pioneering time travelers step through a time portal, only to discover that the process has a "scrambling" effect and that both have arrived into the same past from radically different futures.
Something about the way the road curved around the base of a low but steep bluff played hell with the wind, causing a constant, chaotic flow of dust devils and localized mini- dust storms. Visibility tended to be crap in 2057, and this corner had a reputation for playing hell with the cameras and sensors of cars; there were more accidents here than anywhere else in the greater metropolitan area.
There’d been a push to move the road somewhere else, or lower the bluff, or something, to change the conditions; the problem was, more or less, that that stretch of road had been there since ancient times, had run that route when Jesus rode his donkey into town. It was widely said, though not believed, to be the corner where the Good Samaritan was mugged; so of course everybody involved dragged their feet and argued about it, so it remained, dusty and dangerous.
In the year 33, the road was made of dirt, not asphalt, so the dust storm problem was, if anything, worse; for this one stretch of road, between the curve and the dust, visibility was consistently zero. Everybody walked this stretch with their heads down and a piece of cloth pulled over their face.
Which meant that it was the perfect place to suddenly appear out of thin air, in a flash of bluish light.
Time travel was pretty strictly illegal. The mechanism for doing it was well-understood, but not widely understood; you could make a time machine in your garage... if you had a graduate-level understanding of the physics involved and a pretty good machine- and nano-electronics- shop, and if you wanted to risk getting on a watch list.
Karl was already on a watch-list. A tiny drone, mosquito-sized, was more or less constantly in his vicinity, watching to make sure he didn’t commit crimes; if he did, someone -- some system, more likely -- noticed, and he got a ticket in the mail (and the amount of the fine was auto-debited from his account, for his convenience). If something questionable was going on in his vicinity, someone from Homeland Security showed up, all smiles and back-slaps and bonhomie, but there, making sure he didn’t do anything questionable.
Like make a time machine in his garage.
He’d done it in the slyest way possible: he’d built a series of autonomous drones of his own, drones who had the capacity for self-replication from scratch: they mined carbon out of the very air, molded it into drone parts, stockpiled the tiny parts in trees and bushes, little robot nests.
When there were enough of the things, they knew how to stop making more of themselves and start making time machine parts.
It didn’t surprise anyone that Karl spent a lot of time tinkering in his garage-shop; that was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place, making prohibited devices. It was the laser-drones that had done it; he’d built an army of the things -- two armies, actually, with the idea that they’d fight each other; he’d been convinced that standard war-gaming tag-techniques didn’t account properly for randomness and damage and...
It turns out that carbon nano-drones are tough, really tough; and the scale of laser required to actually burn one out of the air was also enough to... well, to burn holes in people. So Karl, all unknowing, had built two swarms of killer drones, armed to the teeth, and let them loose to do battle in the woods behind his house.
When they’d gotten the fires out, Karl had been offered a job at one of the Army’s weapons labs; but because of various religious and moral stances he had, he declined the offer, and they’d watch-listed him.
Which pissed Karl off, frankly. He’d taken to building hunter-killer drones that ambushed and murdered the drones they sent to watch him, but more and more capable drones appeared to take their place; worse, each new generation of drones seemed to be more observant and pedantic about what constituted a crime. He’d once been fined for over-creaming his coffee, under a hundred-year-old law designed... it didn’t matter, it was still technically on the books and had cost him fifty bucks.
So Karl decided to escape, once and for all; and the only place he could imagine escaping, beyond the observational powers of drones and grinning, apologetic Homes goons, was through time, to somewhere -- somewhen -- that didn’t have drones at all.
One day he’d simply taken a walk in the forest, and, deep in the woods, had pulled aside a certain bush and pulled a brand-new-looking vest out from under it. He put the vest on, felt the little vibratory signal as it it synced with his visual implants, then used his eye-movement to call up the controls for the thing and select a year...
...and then he was gone, in a flash of blue light.
When his vision cleared from the after-affects of the time-travel-related flash, he stood in the dusty road and looked around. He kept his eyes squinted, to keep dust out of them; he’d thought about having the drones make him some goggles, but clear polymers turned out to be difficult.
There was a blue flash, and someone was in the road with Karl, barely visible through the dust.
Fuck, thought Karl, can’t escape even through time.
The figure lurched toward Karl; he thought about running, but what good would it do? If they could follow him six thousand miles and two thousand years, they could probably catch him in a foot race.
“Hey,” said the figure, growing less indistinct.
“Hi,” said Karl, wearily.
This guy had thought ahead, to the extent of having goggles. He reached up and wiped the dust off them with his left hand. His right hand, Karl was alarmed to see, held a gun of some sort, leveled at Karl’s waist.
“Say, listen, there’s no need for that, I’m unarmed,” said Karl. It wasn’t strictly true; the vest had a set of active defenses, including a small army of stun-armed drones, but there was nothing lethal.
“I understand,” said the other man, “But you can’t be too cautious, can you? Traveling in strange times and places.”
“I...” Karl was looking the guy up and down; he certainly wasn’t a Homeland Security agent. He looked like he’d stepped out of.. what were those old movies, Australian, with the crazy cars...? Karl started to feel genuinely alarmed.
The guy grinned. “First time traveling in time?”
Karl nodded, mutely.
“Yeah,” the guy said, “I figured. You’re from one of the nice futures, yeah?”
“Nice futures?”
“Everybody has plenty to eat, enough to drink? Nobody caries guns? No warlord problems?”
“Warlord problems?” The gun hadn’t moved, Karl noticed; it was still pointing at him. He flipped his vision through a set of menu options, and a small flock of gnat-sized stun drones leapt off his back.
“Yeah, one of the nice futures.” The guy sighed. “Listen, I hate to do this to you, but I’m going to need your time machine.”
“My... But I need that,” said Karl. “I’m not moving here, I was just...”
“Yeah, visiting,” said the guy. “I’d like to visit, too; I’d like more than anything to visit the nice, safe, pleasant future you come from, see what’s there.”
And what wasn’t nailed down, thought Karl. His drones were deploying around the guy’s head; the dude hadn’t seemed to notice.
“But my time machine only goes backwards and forwards along my timeline,” the guy said, “So I’m going to need...” He jerked his gun, indicating Karl’s vest.
Karl, jumpy from trying to do something sneaky while he was coming to terms with the fact that he was being mugged, send his drones the Go signal; all at once, they zapped the guy, and the guy lost consiousness in the blink of an eye.
Which was just long enough for him to pull the trigger, and put a bullet through Karl’s stomach.
It didn’t hurt that much, at first. He stared at the hole in his vest, starting the vest on a diagnostic routine almost without thinking.
He found that he was sitting down in the road; the diagnostics on the vest had come up green, mostly. He was, he was being warned by an on-board medical diagnostic system in his implants, in shock.
An actual chemical propellant gun: he’d really been shot with a real bullet. It didn’t seem real to him, that that was a thing that could happen to people. He looked down at the dust beside him; there was an awful lot of blood making a muddy mess of the road under him.
He flipped through the menu system that controlled his vest, selected the time he’d come from, and the bench outside St. James’ trauma clinic near his house.
Jingling sounds in the sand, the sounds of rough voices speaking a language he didn’t recognize; giant shambling figures he recognized, after a few seconds of dumfoundment, as camels, bedecked in riding gear covered in bells.
Wow, he thought, I’m really here, the Jerusalem of Jesus. He looked down at himself and sighed. And I’ve been shot.
There was a blue flash, which started the hell out of the camels, and Karl was gone, back to his nice future of watch lists.
Something about the way the road curved around the base of a low but steep bluff played hell with the wind, causing a constant, chaotic flow of dust devils and localized mini- dust storms. Visibility tended to be crap in 2057, and this corner had a reputation for playing hell with the cameras and sensors of cars; there were more accidents here than anywhere else in the greater metropolitan area.
There’d been a push to move the road somewhere else, or lower the bluff, or something, to change the conditions; the problem was, more or less, that that stretch of road had been there since ancient times, had run that route when Jesus rode his donkey into town. It was widely said, though not believed, to be the corner where the Good Samaritan was mugged; so of course everybody involved dragged their feet and argued about it, so it remained, dusty and dangerous.
In the year 33, the road was made of dirt, not asphalt, so the dust storm problem was, if anything, worse; for this one stretch of road, between the curve and the dust, visibility was consistently zero. Everybody walked this stretch with their heads down and a piece of cloth pulled over their face.
Which meant that it was the perfect place to suddenly appear out of thin air, in a flash of bluish light.
Time travel was pretty strictly illegal. The mechanism for doing it was well-understood, but not widely understood; you could make a time machine in your garage... if you had a graduate-level understanding of the physics involved and a pretty good machine- and nano-electronics- shop, and if you wanted to risk getting on a watch list.
Karl was already on a watch-list. A tiny drone, mosquito-sized, was more or less constantly in his vicinity, watching to make sure he didn’t commit crimes; if he did, someone -- some system, more likely -- noticed, and he got a ticket in the mail (and the amount of the fine was auto-debited from his account, for his convenience). If something questionable was going on in his vicinity, someone from Homeland Security showed up, all smiles and back-slaps and bonhomie, but there, making sure he didn’t do anything questionable.
Like make a time machine in his garage.
He’d done it in the slyest way possible: he’d built a series of autonomous drones of his own, drones who had the capacity for self-replication from scratch: they mined carbon out of the very air, molded it into drone parts, stockpiled the tiny parts in trees and bushes, little robot nests.
When there were enough of the things, they knew how to stop making more of themselves and start making time machine parts.
It didn’t surprise anyone that Karl spent a lot of time tinkering in his garage-shop; that was what had gotten him in trouble in the first place, making prohibited devices. It was the laser-drones that had done it; he’d built an army of the things -- two armies, actually, with the idea that they’d fight each other; he’d been convinced that standard war-gaming tag-techniques didn’t account properly for randomness and damage and...
It turns out that carbon nano-drones are tough, really tough; and the scale of laser required to actually burn one out of the air was also enough to... well, to burn holes in people. So Karl, all unknowing, had built two swarms of killer drones, armed to the teeth, and let them loose to do battle in the woods behind his house.
When they’d gotten the fires out, Karl had been offered a job at one of the Army’s weapons labs; but because of various religious and moral stances he had, he declined the offer, and they’d watch-listed him.
Which pissed Karl off, frankly. He’d taken to building hunter-killer drones that ambushed and murdered the drones they sent to watch him, but more and more capable drones appeared to take their place; worse, each new generation of drones seemed to be more observant and pedantic about what constituted a crime. He’d once been fined for over-creaming his coffee, under a hundred-year-old law designed... it didn’t matter, it was still technically on the books and had cost him fifty bucks.
So Karl decided to escape, once and for all; and the only place he could imagine escaping, beyond the observational powers of drones and grinning, apologetic Homes goons, was through time, to somewhere -- somewhen -- that didn’t have drones at all.
One day he’d simply taken a walk in the forest, and, deep in the woods, had pulled aside a certain bush and pulled a brand-new-looking vest out from under it. He put the vest on, felt the little vibratory signal as it it synced with his visual implants, then used his eye-movement to call up the controls for the thing and select a year...
...and then he was gone, in a flash of blue light.
When his vision cleared from the after-affects of the time-travel-related flash, he stood in the dusty road and looked around. He kept his eyes squinted, to keep dust out of them; he’d thought about having the drones make him some goggles, but clear polymers turned out to be difficult.
There was a blue flash, and someone was in the road with Karl, barely visible through the dust.
Fuck, thought Karl, can’t escape even through time.
The figure lurched toward Karl; he thought about running, but what good would it do? If they could follow him six thousand miles and two thousand years, they could probably catch him in a foot race.
“Hey,” said the figure, growing less indistinct.
“Hi,” said Karl, wearily.
This guy had thought ahead, to the extent of having goggles. He reached up and wiped the dust off them with his left hand. His right hand, Karl was alarmed to see, held a gun of some sort, leveled at Karl’s waist.
“Say, listen, there’s no need for that, I’m unarmed,” said Karl. It wasn’t strictly true; the vest had a set of active defenses, including a small army of stun-armed drones, but there was nothing lethal.
“I understand,” said the other man, “But you can’t be too cautious, can you? Traveling in strange times and places.”
“I...” Karl was looking the guy up and down; he certainly wasn’t a Homeland Security agent. He looked like he’d stepped out of.. what were those old movies, Australian, with the crazy cars...? Karl started to feel genuinely alarmed.
The guy grinned. “First time traveling in time?”
Karl nodded, mutely.
“Yeah,” the guy said, “I figured. You’re from one of the nice futures, yeah?”
“Nice futures?”
“Everybody has plenty to eat, enough to drink? Nobody caries guns? No warlord problems?”
“Warlord problems?” The gun hadn’t moved, Karl noticed; it was still pointing at him. He flipped his vision through a set of menu options, and a small flock of gnat-sized stun drones leapt off his back.
“Yeah, one of the nice futures.” The guy sighed. “Listen, I hate to do this to you, but I’m going to need your time machine.”
“My... But I need that,” said Karl. “I’m not moving here, I was just...”
“Yeah, visiting,” said the guy. “I’d like to visit, too; I’d like more than anything to visit the nice, safe, pleasant future you come from, see what’s there.”
And what wasn’t nailed down, thought Karl. His drones were deploying around the guy’s head; the dude hadn’t seemed to notice.
“But my time machine only goes backwards and forwards along my timeline,” the guy said, “So I’m going to need...” He jerked his gun, indicating Karl’s vest.
Karl, jumpy from trying to do something sneaky while he was coming to terms with the fact that he was being mugged, send his drones the Go signal; all at once, they zapped the guy, and the guy lost consiousness in the blink of an eye.
Which was just long enough for him to pull the trigger, and put a bullet through Karl’s stomach.
It didn’t hurt that much, at first. He stared at the hole in his vest, starting the vest on a diagnostic routine almost without thinking.
He found that he was sitting down in the road; the diagnostics on the vest had come up green, mostly. He was, he was being warned by an on-board medical diagnostic system in his implants, in shock.
An actual chemical propellant gun: he’d really been shot with a real bullet. It didn’t seem real to him, that that was a thing that could happen to people. He looked down at the dust beside him; there was an awful lot of blood making a muddy mess of the road under him.
He flipped through the menu system that controlled his vest, selected the time he’d come from, and the bench outside St. James’ trauma clinic near his house.
Jingling sounds in the sand, the sounds of rough voices speaking a language he didn’t recognize; giant shambling figures he recognized, after a few seconds of dumfoundment, as camels, bedecked in riding gear covered in bells.
Wow, he thought, I’m really here, the Jerusalem of Jesus. He looked down at himself and sighed. And I’ve been shot.
There was a blue flash, which started the hell out of the camels, and Karl was gone, back to his nice future of watch lists.
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