The Children Who Time Lost (14 page)

My apartment building was not as busy as I’d thought it would be. A number of armed Lypsos escorted people away from the entrance as the Lotto van touched down. Kevin was still laughing as hard as he had when he first started lifting Dylan up. The baby took to him instantaneously, but then, he seemed to take to everyone as if he’d known him or her for years. For a child that young, he surprised me with his lack of crying, even when the flashing lights of the cameras were all he could see. It must have been something to do with the future. I didn’t care either way. I wasn’t going to complain about having a well-behaved baby.

The lobby was also clear, but with the number of Lypsos roaming about, trying their utmost to ensure my safety, I wasn’t surprised. I’d told Angela I didn’t need any to stay behind to watch over our apartment, but she didn’t listen. Two Lypsos were posted by the entrance, and there was nothing I could say to change her mind.

As we approached the elevators, I caught glimpses of people—I couldn’t be sure whether they were men, women or children—peeking through the curtains of their glass apartments.

“I can’t believe we have a son.” Kevin said. He nodded at a bronze Kyso that approached us. It went on to call all ten of the transparent lifts. I looked back and forth from it to the Lypsos near the entrance. Although quite similar in appearance, the Kysos didn’t scare me half as much. I just kept imagining that someone in the control center would one day accidentally misconfigure one of the armed Lypsos and they would open fire on humans.

“Please enter, Rachel and Kevin Harris,” the Kyso said when a middle elevator arrived.

I smiled at it and entered. Kevin stepped in behind me, rocking a still-giggling Dylan from side to side. The elevator went up quickly. As we went past the first eight floors, all I could see were people peeking at us, as they had done previously, but carefully so they wouldn’t be seen. When we got past fifteen stories, however, people started walking out of their apartments to stare at us. It was as if they had had enough of sneaking a peek. They now just stood and stared, some open-mouthed. It was quite intimidating and strange.

I smiled at some of them. Some women gave me narrow smiles back, but most had blank expressions. Some scowled. After a while, I leaned toward Kevin and buried my head in his chest. “They hate me.”

“No, they don’t, baby. They’re in awe of you. They envy you.”

“But it’s not fair. How could I win it on my first attempt? I’m starting to feel what they probably feel—something might not be right.”

Kevin edged back and looked into my eyes. “What’re you trying to say? That they rigged it? That they made us win on purpose?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I guess … I guess I don’t know what I’m saying.”

He put his free arm around my waist. “Honey. Listen to me. Nobody deserves this little man more than us.” He glanced at Dylan for a moment and smiled. “We’ve been through so much, you and I. The experiments you had to go through. Everything.” The elevator came to a stop and Kevin walked out. “Even if they did rig it, you tell me who deserves it more than you.”

I put my arm around his waist and pressed my mouth against his. The feeling of his soft lips made my knees tremble. Kevin was still my heart and soul. Then Dylan giggled. I pulled away and looked at him. I saw an excited face and laughed back. I then made a funny face at Dylan. He laughed even harder and I simply looked at Kevin and shrugged. “Well, at least they gave us a happy baby.” I opened our apartment door and walked in.

“Dinner’s ready,” Kevin shouted out from the kitchen.

“I’ll be right there.” I leaned farther into Dylan’s crib and saw his eyes steadily closing. I placed his hands by his sides and straightened his legs.

“Rachel,” Kevin repeated for the fourth time.

I hissed and stood up straight. I reached for the light switch and caught a glimpse of a white cloth sticking out of the bag Dylan’s parents had packed for him. As I put it back in the suitcase, I noticed a faint glimmer, similar to light reflecting off metal.

I peeked into the bag but didn’t see anything. I rummaged around, pushing the clothes to one side. The glimmer returned, and then I noticed what it was. It looked like a gold computer chip. I picked it up. It was about the size of a chip you used to find in olden-day credit cards. But I didn’t understand what it was doing with Dylan’s stuff.

I stared at it for a few seconds, ignoring Kevin’s calls. Then I placed it on the floor beside Dylan’s crib. I ran my hand through the suitcase again. I had no idea what I was looking for, but the chip must have been part of something else. It wouldn’t have been just lying there otherwise.

My hand touched something metallic. I circled around the same area but didn’t feel it again. I grunted and threw everything from the suitcase onto the floor and then found what it was: a silver holder, square in shape and marginally bigger than the gold chip. It had to be its case. I held it up, just underneath the light, and tried to place the chip inside. It fit right into place.

“What’s taking—” Kevin stopped and stared at me, wide-eyed. “What’re you doing? Why’s all of Dylan’s stuff on the floor?”

I held the chip and its case in the air, toward him. “Look at what I found. It was inside Dylan’s bag.”

He walked toward me, knelt and took it from me. I could see the gold chip shining in the light. “What is this?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Beats me. It must be something, though.”

“I dunno. It’s probably just something his parents forgot in there. I say we should probably just get rid of it.”

He rose, but I held on to his wrist. “Give it to me, Kevin.”

He looked at me with questioning eyes. “What do you want to do with it?”

“You know that a chip that size, with that case, fits into our computer. We can check out what it is.”

He yanked his hand away, the chip still in it. “Are you crazy? You know we can’t do that, even if it was meant for us. It’s forbidden to look at any kind of information from the future, or are you forgetting the rules? We have to report this.”

I stood and walked up to him. Then I placed my fingers against the edge of the case, sticking out from his fingers. He held on to it with some force.

“I don’t care about the rules, Kevin,” I said. “Whatever’s on it came with our new baby. I’ll destroy it, all right, but not until after I’ve seen what it contains.”

He glared at me and released his grip. I made a fist around the case.

“This is a bad idea, Rachel.”

I stared at him without speaking.

“Okay, fine. Wait there. I’ll get the computer.”

He walked out and I sat on the floor beside a floating cream sofa, a few feet from Dylan’s crib. My hands were shaking, but it wasn’t due to my needing my drugs; I had just had another dose twenty minutes earlier. It was simply fear, fear of the unknown.

Kevin returned two minutes later with his laptop. His was one of the more powerful ones available. The screen was pure glass, with no metal frame around it. The base—glass also—was as flat as paper, with a touch-screen keyboard. He placed it on the floor beside me and tapped the bottom right-hand corner twice. A small glass compartment rose, with a port for a flash drive. I looked at the case in my hand once more, and it looked like a perfect fit.

“It can’t be the same,” Kevin said. “That one’s from 2108. They must have gone light-years ahead of us by then. There’s no way it’ll work.”

I edged the case toward the open compartment, the chip still inside. Then I held my hand steady.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Kevin said.

I moved my hand away from the drive and considered his words. I had just won Dylan. Was I being stupid? Could I be jeopardizing everything by watching what was on the chip?

“You don’t have to do this,” Kevin said. “We can just pretend we never saw it.”

I stared at the case and the gold chip inside. Then I faced Kevin again. “How can we do that? It came with our son.”

He nodded. I slid the case partway into the port, waiting for it to be sucked into place. Nothing happened. I looked at Kevin and he shrugged, but then it flew from my hand.

A bright green light filled the laptop screen. I gasped, put the laptop on the floor and moved back. Kevin held my shoulder and sat on the floor beside me. The green light flickered before a white wall came into view. Kevin and I sat speechless.

“That’s from the future,” I said. Kevin looked at me. “That looks like where I got Dylan. What is—”

A man came into view. He had bright blond hair and very blue eyes, but his expression was one of sadness, with a hint of fear.

“That’s Dylan’s father,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

I raised my right hand up in a dismissive manner and watched the screen. The man wiped sweat from around his mouth. “You don’t know me,” he said. “You’re probably wondering why you’re watching this. You probably think that this is some sort of mistake. That this isn’t meant for you. But you’re wrong. I worked so hard to make sure I got a storage medium that would work in your time. And I managed to find one, for what I’m about to say carries significant consequences for our world, our way of life.

“My name is Tristan Galloway, and for many years I’ve been living in fear. A prisoner. Unable to allow myself to think or even feel, for fear that they’ll know. My life is a living prison sentence, and I’ve wanted to end it all so many times. More than you could ever imagine.” He stopped and wiped more sweat, this time from his forehead, his face now trembling. “I thought of many ways to get a message back, but I didn’t know how. It wasn’t until my wife, Sally, came to me one day and suggested that we volunteer our child for the Lotto that I realized what I had to do.” He leaned forward and dropped to his knees, and his face filled most of the screen.

“I’m so sorry that you received this, whoever you are, for what I am about to tell you might turn your world upside down.” He edged back to his seat and his eyes twitched. “But the message I carry is so important that I sent my only son sixty-five years into the past to make sure you received it.” He paused and sighed, as if reluctant to go any further.

I clenched my fists and inched forward.

“You are all in grave danger,” he said, “everyone in your time. Nothing is as it seems. Your life as you know it is one big lie.”

The screen flickered for a second and lines appeared in the middle. Then the sound went. I rushed forward and shook the laptop, but nothing changed. The lines now covered most of the screen, like some sort of interference. Kevin sat beside me and fiddled with the back of the laptop, but the screen was filled with snow, and we couldn’t hear anything. Then the screen went blank.

We sat in silence for almost a minute, unable to speak. I didn’t know what to think. Kevin started the recording again, but it cut out at exactly the same point. The room returned to silence.

“What now?” I said.

Kevin gave me a blank stare. “What do you mean? You saw the recording. There is nothing there.”

I frowned at Kevin. He was trying to pretend we hadn’t heard what we’d just heard. “But he looked scared,” I said. “He was about to tell us something big.”

“Except he didn’t,” Kevin snapped. “Now I wish we never even saw the damn thing.”

I stood up and placed my hands on his left shoulder. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? Something feels very wrong, doesn’t it?”

Kevin shot to his feet. “But we don’t know what he was going to say.”

“But we’re gonna do something, right?”

“Like what?”

I shrugged. “We’ve got to tell someone. We can’t just ignore what we saw.”

“We broke the law, Rachel,” he snapped. “Or are you forgetting that? No, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

Dylan started crying. I stared at him for a moment, wondering what had triggered it. Was it because we were arguing? I frowned at Kevin and picked our son up. He swung his arms around for a few seconds and I rocked him from side to side. His thrashing eventually ceased and he shut his eyes again. I placed him back in his crib and fixed my gaze on Kevin. He gave me a stern look and headed for the door.

“So you’re gonna do what you always do and run away from our problems?”

He paused and glared at me. “No, don’t you put this one on me. I asked … No, I
begged
you not to watch that video. But you didn’t listen.”

“And I told you I never wanted to play and yet you entered me without even discussing it with me first.”

“It’s all about you, isn’t it, Rachel?” he shouted.

“Shush,” I whispered. “You’ll wake Dylan.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you violated one of the Lotto rules.”

I turned toward the wall. “We still have to tell someone about this,” I said. “Maybe Angela or someone else from the Lotto. We can tell them we watched it by mistake. That we didn’t know what was on the chip.”

He walked toward me. “Are you crazy?” he half-shouted. “Do you know what will happen to us if we say anything?” He rested his right knee on the floating sofa. “Let’s just imagine for a second that the guy on the—”

“Tristan,” I said.