Emperors of Time (6 page)

Our computer
had the ability to comprehend the events that had already taken place, how each
one connected to the other.  It required immense amounts of data and
something bordering on an independent intelligent sentience in computer
form.  The program collected factual and biographical data about every
known person and event in the present.  Extrapolating from this
information, as well as the information we uploaded about the past, allowed the
computer to form an understanding about history’s causes and effects.  Now
it could make intelligent guesses about what would change if one terrorist was
killed, or if Lincoln had never been assassinated.  It also allowed the
Emperors of Time to input a desired effect, such as Dr. Russell being president
of the world government, as he is in my present timeline, and then outputs the
easiest way to cause it. 

We still
needed a way to change the past, though, and in 2346, we solved our final
roadblock:  How to make the Domini Temporis recognize objects as distinct
essences, connected to each time and place they had been.  We placed a
small, but non-replicable piece of each of our minds into one of the twelve
Domini. 

This means
that the twelve of us are always linked to the Domini and can remember all
timelines, no matter who else uses the Domini.  If events are changed,
only those linked to the Domini understand what has changed.  We twelve
will always remember all timelines, and anybody else who uses them will
remember any timeline they used a Dominus to travel from.

We took a
couple of quick test runs to prove that it worked, making sure not to change
anything…  deciding what to change was the government’s job.

We created
the Domini to function under a very specific set of rules to protect the
American Empire if the Domini were captured by an enemy.  Only one event
per year can be altered.  Once it has been, the Domini block people from
making changes within one year before or after the changed event, although the
Domini will allow travel to that year to change the timeline back to the way it
was.  This is in case somehow we changed something in the wrong way. 
Each person may travel to a year only once, with the exception of the three
years before 2347, which we left open to allow us to test the Domini. 
This is why I cannot travel to your own year again; I travelled there once to
send the package with the Dominus and coin.

The Domini
exist in every timeline and can’t be reprogrammed unless they are all gathered
together.

When I awoke
the day before we were scheduled to give the Domini to the government, I
realized my world had changed overnight.  Changes continued over the next
three days, since I saw the changes after however long it took for the Emperors
to complete them from their base in my time.  I immediately knew who was
behind it; I had long been suspicious of Russell.  I discovered everyone
except me was in on the trick. 

Comparing
history books to my own memory, I determined that the first cause of the change
was Lincoln’s survival.  After that, it was only a short time before I
found you.  I assumed you would still be around in this timeline. 
Dr. Russell is a descendant of yours, and it would be harder for him to come to
power if he didn’t originally exist in the present timeline.  He will
manipulate time in a way that will not preclude you from existing, and this
will probably keep most of your friends in existence as well. 

In the
original timeline, your current year had relative peace and not an
insignificant amount of prosperity.  The Emperors of Time are conniving to
establish a one world government where they are in control, so the Emperors’
timelines will probably always be very violent.  The Emperors of Time are
more interested in power than they are in lives. 

To return the
world to how it was, you must return events close enough to normal to allow me
to steal the Domini Temporis from the Emperors of Time, who will hopefully be
vulnerable enough for me to take all the Domini so I can reprogram them. 
I hope to initialize the self-destruct sequence, which will make it as if the
Domini had never been activated except that you and your fellow time-travelers,
the Emperors of Time, and I will know that there was once an alternative
timeline. 

“Well that was
some heavy reading,” commented Rose, when they were done.  The next page
started the historical summary, but not even Tim felt like starting on that
now.

“Yeah, it was,”
agreed Julie.

There was a
brief pause, after which Rose said, “So my mind maybe wandered during some of
the more technical stuff, and something occurred to me.”

“Yeah?” asked
Tim, eager for a momentary diversion.  “What’s that?”

“We know almost
nothing about Billy,” stated Rose. 

“Hey!” shouted
Julie.  “I thought you were on my side on this!”

“I am, I think,”
said Rose, “but I’d still like to meet him before I travel through time with
him…   I mean…  assuming you guys aren’t full of it.  Which
I still feel like you might be.  But, if you’re not, we’ve got one day
before we’re supposed to actually time travel.  What if tomorrow night, we
hung out, all four of us?  We could get to know him, I could get to know
Tim a little better, and we can decide whether Billy’s the kind of person we
want to be travelling through time with.”

They thought
about this for a moment.  “I’m game,” said Tim.

Julie sighed,
then said, “All right…  what about bowling?  Do you guys bowl?”

“Not well, but
sure…  there’s a place in town,” said Rose.

“Okay. 
I’ll make sure that Billy’s in…  what about six tomorrow?” asked Julie.

“Cool,” agreed
Rose.  Tim nodded.

It was at that
point that the door to the house opened.

“Oh no!”
exclaimed Julie in a hushed whisper.  “Mikey!”

Tim raised his
eyebrows, noting the irony present in the fact that he was discussing the
intricacies of time travel and at the same time worrying about whether a nine
year old was going to catch him in a girl’s room. 

Still, he
listened to Julie’s advice when she said, “Hush…  We’ll just wait for a
few minutes until he’s gotten a snack…  Then he’ll be playing his video
games and we can sneak you out.”

Once they had
finished executing this plan, which wound up with Tim safely outside of both
the bedroom and the house, they decided they had had enough talk about time
travel for one afternoon, and they would bowl together the next day. 

The place was
dingy and a little run down, but they had a decent package on Friday nights
where you could get shoes and your first game for just eight dollars a person
and three dollar games after that.  If nothing else, it was a cheap way to
spend a Friday night.  Besides, in Tim’s case, his parents were footing
the bill anyway. 

“I’m just glad
you’re finally hanging out with friends on a Friday night,” said his Mom as she
handed him a twenty dollar bill.

“You don’t have
to-” started Tim.  He had been planning to use some money he had gotten
from tutoring kids in History earlier that month.

“Take the
money,” his Dad suggested, in a way that made it clear he just wanted the
subject to close so that he could get back to watching his news show.

Suzie looked up
from her ipad.  “Why does he get money?”

“Because he asks
for it less,” Dad explained, as he turned up the volume a bit.

Thankfully, at
that point, there was a ring at the doorbell.  “Right!” said Tim quickly,
nearly jumping out of his chair.  “I should be back by eleven…  That
okay?”

“Sure,” said his
mother.  “And then tomorrow, you’ll be leaving around noon?”

“Yes,” said Tim,
as he began to walk down the stairs.

“I’ll wake you
up for breakfast at nine, then,” she said.

“Thanks,
Mom.  See you then,” said Tim, as he began opening the door.

“Have fun, Tim”
said his Dad with a tone that suggested he was glad things would soon quiet
down again.

“Bye, then,”
said his Mom.

Rose was
borrowing her Mom’s car for the night, so was driving.  The bowling alley
wasn’t far away, and they spent most of the time on the way talking about stuff
that was mostly normal for kids their age.  It was only mostly normal
because of the two songs they heard, Julie mentioned she had never heard either
of them before.  It turned out that neither band existed in Julie’s
timeline.

They met Billy
in the parking lot of the bowling alley.  As they walked into the building
around eight, the most noticeable thing was the smell of smoke and the hazy
quality of the air from the smoker’s section over in the far lanes. 

“They outlawed
smoking in public buildings in my timeline,” Julie whispered under her breath
to Tim, who wished his own timeline would do the same.  Cigarette smoke
had always smelled unpleasant to him, and he was surprised when some people
thought it smelled good.

Tim took out the
twenty his mother had given him and paid for himself and Julie, remembering
that Billy was supposed to believe they were dating.  “Just one game for
the two of you?” asked the cashier.

“Not sure yet,”
said Julie.  “Will we still get the discount if we come back up later?”

“Sure,” said the
cashier, not at all cheerfully.  Tim supposed it meant an extra
transaction for her.

Billy paid for
his entrance as well as Rose’s.

“You guys bowl
often?” asked Billy curiously to the group at large.

“Not enough to
be good at it,” said Rose.  “What about you?”

“Well, I’m
okay,” said Billy.

“Oh no,” said
Rose dramatically.  Billy looked perplexed, so she continued.  “If
you were really just all right, you’d say you were bad at it, to give me room
to be impressed.  If you say you’re okay at it, you’re probably really
good.  Which has potential to be very annoying.”  But she smiled a
bit to show that she was mostly joking. 

It turned out
that their lane was near two televisions.  One was showing a late season
basketball game between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics, and the
other was showing the same cable news network that Tim’s father had just been
watching.

Tim gathered
from the news station that American troops and allies were trying to push their
offensive further, taking a two pronged approach into Iran and Eastern
Turkey.  Eastern Turkey was a big deal, as the news anchor was no doubt
pointing out - although Tim couldn’t hear because the sound was off - because
Eastern Turkey was close to Armenia, which was tantalizingly close to Russian
soil.  Of course, pushing into Russian soil would not win the war, likely
nothing would within the next couple years, according to the websites Tim
read.  But the anchor was probably not mentioning that, since the
government would have kept that off the list of talking points. 

Tim couldn’t
make much sense at all of what they were showing on the screen with the
basketball game, but Billy seemed pretty excited about it.

“You like
Philadelphia, then?” asked Tim as they were all picking which ball to use.

Billy looked at
him with his eyes a bit narrowed.  “Oh!  The basketball team…? 
Sorry, for some reason I thought you meant the city…  Yeah.  I like
the Sixers.  You?”

“Um,” said Tim,
with a sideways glance at Julie.  He’d decided for her sake to give Billy
a chance, or at least talk to him long enough to come up with a concrete reason
why he didn’t like him.  So he said, “Yeah…  They’re my favorite
basketball team.”

“Yeah? 
That’s great!  You know if they win this game, they’ll clinch a spot in
the playoffs, right?” asked Billy.

“Yeah,” lied
Tim.  “But I think they’ll definitely win.”

“Well, let’s
hope so…  I think Casey’s still injured for the Sixers, so he won’t be
playing tonight.  Without him, it’s going to be hard for us to match the
Celtics’ big men.  But yeah…  We should still hold our own, I think,”
said Billy.

Tim tried to
smile in a way that would not suggest that what Billy said was more confusing
to him than what Hopkins had written about time travel.  But his head was
spinning like crazy.  Tim settled on the next ball he touched and got back
to where the girls were setting up the group members’ names on the bowling
alley computer.

“Okay, well
you’re first, Billy,” said Julie, once everything was set up.

“We put the
names in alphabetical order,” Rose announced.

“On purpose?” asked
Billy, who seemingly couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or weirded out.

“Well, no… 
but when I noticed, I had to point it out,” explained Rose. 

Billy shook his
head and smiled as he picked up his ball to bowl.  Rose might not have
been wrong about him being good.  He bowled a strike on his first
frame. 

Rose rolled her
eyes, “I can see this is going to be unbearable,” she said in a loud, dramatic
voice, ensuring Billy would hear her.  If she was trying to flirt with
Billy, who she was supposed to be thinking about dating, Tim was amused by her
style.

“You’ll learn to
deal with it,” said Billy.  He smiled at Rose. 

Julie bowled
next.  After studying the basketball game, Billy announced to Tim, “Well,
I was right, Casey’s out, but we’re still winning 12-7.”

Tim nodded in a
way that was meant to suggest that this statement had some kind of meaning to
him. 

“I’ve never been
into basketball,” announced Rose, without prompting.  “Now, soccer, I can
get behind.”

“Oh, come on!”
protested Billy.  “Soccer’s got no action!  There’re plenty of
professional soccer players who don’t score as many goals in their career as I
score in a game.  Soccer, you’re lucky if the score is 1-0 by the end, in
basketball both teams can get over a hundred points in the game, and that’s in
about half as much time.

“Wow!” said Tim,
and then realized that this was information that he, as a pretend basketball
fan, should probably have known.  As Rose and Billy looked at him with
confusion, Tim glanced over at their bowling lane.  “Oh…  I meant
about Julie’s situation.  She has a 7-10 split now.”

Rose and Billy
looked over at the lane as well.  “Oh,” said Rose.  “Right. 
Well…  get that spare, Julie!”

Julie smiled at
the three of them and rolled the ball.  Unfortunately, it went right down
the center of the lane, managing to miss not just one, but both of the
pins. 

Rose was up
next. 

“So, I hear you
and Tim are in the same French class,” said Julie, sitting down next to Billy,
across from Tim.

“Yeah,” said
Billy with a grin.  “That class is a bit of a laugh, isn’t it Tim?”

“Er…  I
guess so,” said Tim.

“Well, of course
it’s useful, what with France being our biggest foreign ally and all, but some
of the activities Mr. Anderson makes us do are pretty stupid.  Plus, Jimmy
and Ben are pretty cool.  You should work with us more often when we’re
doing group work.”

They heard Rose
shout a mild curse.  “Sorry!  Gutterball!” she added.

Tim
laughed.  “You guys actually do work?  Doesn’t look like it in from
where I sit.”

“Sure…  I
do, anyway.  I’m pulling a 98 in that class.  I guess Jimmy and Ben
are pulling B’s, but they’d be doing worse if I wasn’t there,” Billy
shrugged.  “I’m just good at French, I guess.”

Rose came back,
having managed to knock down four pins, “You’re up, Tim.”

Tim got a
spare.  Rose and Julie cheered for him, as Billy got up to bowl.  “I
guess I know who my competition is now.”

When Tim sat
back down, the two girls were still talking about France.

“I’ve been to
France, you know,” said Rose.  “Me and my Mom went a couple years
back.  Well…  England, technically, but they’ve all spoken French
there for the last fifty years or so…  We could hardly find anyone who
could speak English with us, just a couple of old people who were alive when
English was still the official language.”

This time, Billy
only made a spare. 

“I’ve never been
out of the country,” registered Julie, as she got up for her second
frame. 

“Me neither,”
said Billy, sitting down and looking back at the game.  “Ah…  Sixers
down by three now.”

“Oh no!” said
Tim, hoping this was the appropriate response.

“Yeah,
well…  Remember we still have two more games after this one.  If we
beat Charlotte and San Antonio, we’re in as long as Boston loses one of their
next two,” said Billy. 

Tim normally considered
himself an intelligent person, except in math class, but he couldn’t follow
this conversation at all.  “Right,” he said, figuring this would at least
be an uncontroversial thing to say. 

Julie knocked
down nine this time.

As Rose somehow
managed to use her two throws to knock down the pin on the far right and the
one on the far left, Tim scanned the ticker at the bottom of the screen with
the news feed.  Four Americans were dead in the fighting for the day, but
it was anybody’s guess how many allied, enemy, and civilian deaths figured into
the same amount of fighting.  He made a mental note to check his internet
sources later, although he wasn’t sure why he wanted to know…  He knew it
wouldn’t be good news. 

Tim knocked down
seven on his first throw and two on his second.

“He seems
friendly enough,” said Rose in a hushed tone, as Billy went to take his
turn. 

“Told you so,”
said Julie.

“I suppose,”
agreed Tim.

“He’s pretending
not to notice you don’t know anything about basketball,” said Rose, with a
laugh. 

“Is it that
obvious?” asked Tim, who thought he was doing a better acting job.

There wasn’t
time to get any more conversation in without Billy, though, because he rolled a
strike again and came back to sit down. 

Time passed
pleasantly for awhile.  By the seventh frame, the Sixers were up by five
at halftime, which Billy was optimistic about because according to him, the
Sixers were a second half team anyway, whatever that meant.  Julie bought
a soda for Tim and her to share, while Rose did the same for her and
Billy. 

It was during
the eighth frame, when Julie was up to bowl and Rose was in the bathroom, that
a dozen red lights along the far wall of the bowling alley began to
flash.  A loud, high pitched beeping rang out.  Tim dropped the coke
on the ground.  Several bowling balls guttered or were thrown wild as
bowlers were startled out of their normal steps.

It took a second
for Tim to realize what was going on.  The area was under missile
bombardment and the anti-missile device had failed.  If this had been a
bigger building, like the stadium the Sixers were playing in, there would have
been a backup system, but the bowling alley wouldn’t have that. 

Tim wondered if
there was a bomb shelter.  The school had an underground bunker, but there
were over a thousand people at the school every day.  There weren’t more
than a hundred people at the bowling alley.

The loudspeaker
clicked on, and a voice could be heard above the worried chatter of the patrons
and the urgent cries of the alarm.  “Everyone stay calm.  Get as far
as you can from the windows.  The tracker says the missiles are
close.  No time to get underground.  Get under a chair if you can.”

Julie didn’t
need to be told twice.  She abandoned her ball in the gutter and ran back
to the chairs.

Rose was
standing halfway across the floor.  She must have just gotten out of the
bathroom when the alarm went off. 

She seemed to
have frozen.  Tim understood.  There were plenty of chairs between
her and Tim, Julie, and Billy, but she looked scared.  Probably she wanted
to be close to her friends.  Unable to decide where to go, she stayed put,
which wasn’t the best decision.

“You two hide, I
got her,” said Billy with a note of urgency but also a good bit of
confidence. 

As Billy darted
across the room, first Julie, then Tim, followed his advice.  From his
position under the chair, Tim could see Billy gesticulating madly toward a
clump of chairs near Rose.  She still didn’t move. 

Billy reached
her as the ground shook with what could only have been a nearby missile
impact.  There was no reason for the Russians to target their small town,
but their strategy within the last couple years seemed to be to spray missiles
far and wide, figuring the defense system would fail sometimes.  They knew
any damage they could do would cause distress within the civilian
population.  On those counts, the Russians were right.