Erasing Time (18 page)

Echo leaned against the wall and watched the floor numbers flash by. “I realize the Time Strainer is dangerous. What does that have to do with Sheridan and me?”

Taylor’s arm fell to her side, slapping against her leg. “Nothing. I’m not talking to you about Sheridan. That was an excuse she and I came up with so I could explain to you why you have to help me destroy the Time Strainer.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help himself even though it was clear from her expression that she was serious. She expected the two of them to go to the Scicenter, walk into the restricted room where the Time Strainer sat—and what? Kick the thing until it broke? “You’re wasting your time by even suggesting such a thing. And don’t lie to me again. I’m a historian. I want to hear the truth, not fabrications you’ve made up to—” He let out a sigh. “What else did you lie about? The schools?”

“No, I just lied this time because I need your help.”

He rolled his eyes. “You said you wanted to study
literature
in school. I should have known that wasn’t true. You expect me to believe colleges gave out degrees for reading novels?”

Taylor held her hands up in the air. “Okay, you’re right. I studied math, physics, and computers. And if you can splice into a program that accesses the Time Strainer signals, I can keep it from working.”

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open on the parking lot level. Echo didn’t step out. “I understand how you feel about the Time Strainer, but it took our scientists years to develop and build it. Just because I know how to computigate doesn’t mean I could sit down and figure out a way to destroy it.”

The doors remained open. The elevator sensors could tell they hadn’t left. He reached for the button to take them back to the Wordlab, but Taylor grabbed his hand. “I can do it, Echo.”

“You don’t understand our technology.”

“But I understand the technology from my day, and once I destroy that, the Time Strainer won’t work anymore. There won’t be any more energy streams for it to reconfigure into people.” She still held on to his hand so he wouldn’t push the elevator button. “I already know how to do it,” she said. “Just help me gain access to the right computers.”

Her gaze didn’t waver from his eyes. She was serious. She thought she could do it.

“You don’t realize the difficulty of what you’re suggesting. How could you …?” And then he understood. In that one moment he saw Taylor differently. His hand dropped to his side, the dread of the situation outweighing the excitement. “You’re Tyler Sherwood, aren’t you?”

She gazed out at the parking lot and didn’t answer.

He swore, then rubbed at his forehead. “Are you sure you can stop the Time Strainer?”

She nodded.

He walked out of the elevator, and Taylor followed. Sneaking into the Scicenter with the scientist the government was searching for was both dangerous and stupid. But he had no choice now. Taylor was right. A functioning Time Strainer was even more dangerous.

Echo watched Taylor’s hands fluttering over the keyboard. He could tell her lack of familiarity with the board frustrated her, that she wanted to go faster than she did; and as it was, the numbers on the computer screen appeared in rapid course.

Sensatogy
was the word people used to describe those who could computigate—who could understand, no,
see
math and programming as though it was as easy as writing words.

Years ago he’d heard his teachers use the word
sensatogy
describing him. They said he ought to work in the city’s programming department. He hadn’t wanted to work for the government, though. Too many rules, too many authority figures to please. Besides, he’d heard programmers were pressured to join the Dakine. It was better for him to work for Jeth. Much more comfortable. Safer.

Funny how your fears had a way of finding you no matter what you did.

A memory ran through his mind: he and his brother playing light ball in a VR center. It was almost their sixteenth birthday, and the deadline for submitting career applications was nearing. All that week, their class had listened to teachers lecture about the responsibilities of being an adult. “Don’t pick a career that you want,” the students were told again and again. “Pick a career that the city
needs
.” Loyalty to the city produced self-respect. Self-respect produced happiness. And didn’t they want to be happy?

Echo had not only ignored that particular advice, he had turned the whole “self-respect equaled happiness” saying into a joke. He’d spliced into the city’s datalinks and posted a listing:
Self-respect for sale. Bargain priced
. He’d put the school director’s comlink number as the contact information. The day after that, Echo had posted an ad in the personals:
Desperate woman looking for man with self-respect. Rank not an issue
. That one had their science teacher’s comlink info. She had always been a pain. Then the next day there had been the fake news story:
Enforcers uncover criminal group selling covert self-respect. Saddened citizens proclaim, “But where will we buy affordable self-respect now?”

Echo didn’t get caught. He was skilled enough at splicing that it couldn’t be traced. Still, everyone at school knew who had done it, and his rank that week soared.

“Which means the teachers were right,” Echo had said as he aimed the ball at a moving yellow light on the wall. “Self-respect does produce happiness.” He shot and hit a light, making it disappear. “I’m going to love programming.”

Joseph caught the ball on the bounce-back and dribbled to the opposite wall. He hadn’t hit as many of his lights, and the green ones were multiplying. “We can’t be programmers. Too much stress. They all die early.”

Echo jogged up to him, positioning himself to catch the bounce-back. “But programmers live better. Think of our ranks.”

Joseph shot at a green light zipping across the wall. He missed, and it split in two. “Who cares about ranks?”

Echo recovered the ball. “Girls. Friends. Apartment managers. Employers. Strangers …” He jogged to the opposite wall, fending off Joseph’s attempts to steal the ball. “Did I already say girls?
Pues
, it’s worth saying twice.”

“So we’ll work for Dad and find a way to splice into the rank program. Then you can change your number to whatever you want. I think one hundred fifty-two would fit you.”

“And that wouldn’t be dangerous—cutting into the city’s most guarded program.” Echo threw the ball, and a yellow light blinked out.

He leaped for the bounce-back, but Joseph reached it first. “What’s life without a challenge?”

Joseph jogged down the court, and Echo followed, grinning. “I’ve thought of my next news story:
Enforcers uncover criminal group selling covert challenges. Saddened citizens proclaim, ‘Where will we buy affordable challenges now?’”

Joseph dribbled the ball, hardly paying attention to the green lights. “Dad would be easy to work for. It will be fun. Besides, if you don’t agree, you know I’m going to pretend to be you and put in your application for the Wordlab anyway.” Joseph bounced the ball back and forth between his hands, presenting both sides of the argument. “Fun. Stressful. Fun. Stressful.”

“Fun,” Echo said, and swiped the ball away from him. He ran down the court laughing.

The two of them were so used to working together, to being together, they hadn’t even considered choosing different careers. Maybe if they’d had different jobs … But it was no use going over it endlessly in his mind.

He brought himself back to the present, concentrated on the sensor clip he had taken off his belt. The screen read zero. Good. There was still no one within thirty feet of them. Occasionally he got a reading in the beyond-thirty-feet category, but that was just people passing by in the main hallway.

If someone came down the corridor that led to this room, Echo still didn’t know what he’d do. He couldn’t come up with a good excuse as to why Taylor and he were even in the Scicenter, let alone sitting in front of a computer in a restricted area.

Echo gave his sensor one last check, then looked back at the computer screen, following the symbols as they appeared. His job had been to splice into the Time Strainer’s main command program, a task that was harder and had taken longer than he’d imagined. The scientists had done a good job protecting this programming, layering encryptions with a maze of wrong turns and warning bells. If Echo hadn’t been able to see the program as a whole, to see the symbols as though they were a giant picture, he wouldn’t have been able to navigate his way through it.

Now he waited silently for Taylor to finish typing in her command. She was using the same frequency that the Time Strainer used to contact the QGP. Instead of requesting it to find and turn someone into energy, the signal would instruct the QGP to turn its own casing from matter into energy. The blast would destroy the QGP, and fortunately, there was no way to send anyone back in time to fix it.

Echo glanced down at the sensor. Still zero. He was glad he had it with him. He’d built it three years ago on a whim. Admittedly, it was a dangerous whim since such sensors were illegal, but the project had tempted him with its ease. Everyone wore tracking crystals. How hard could it be to create the software that would tell him when someone approached?

He’d kept it hidden in a drawer, forgotten, until the Dakine killed his brother. Then he’d added a new feature to it: a signal-jamming detector. If the sensor ever lost all signals, it would vibrate to let him know Dakine assassins were near.

Echo wore it clipped onto the inside of his belt next to two other illegal devices, which he’d spent the last month building: a lock disabler and a laser disrupter.

Echo hadn’t needed the lock disabler to sneak into the Scicenter. He and Taylor had coincided their entrance with the morning shift change and they’d simply strode inside, past the front station with the crowd of incoming workers. The hallways had been so full that no one paid any attention to them as they branched off and went into the restricted area. And once they were there, no one had been around to see Echo use his lock disabler on the door.

Leaving would be harder.

They couldn’t stay here till the next shift change. That was seven hours away. They would have to find a time when the hallways were empty. True, the building’s surveillance cameras would record that they’d been here. Eventually the scientists would figure out what had happened, but by then Echo would be out of the city.

Echo fingered the clip that kept the disrupter hooked inside his belt. It wasn’t a perfect invention. He could use the device only once. The disrupter put out such a strong electromagnetic pulse that it not only froze nearby laser boxes, it destroyed itself in the process. He had engineered it in case he needed to escape from Dakine assassins. He hadn’t ever imagined he might have to use it in the Scicenter.

Echo watched Taylor’s symbols marching across the screen and tried to quell his impatience. “You created a recursive loop there,” he whispered, and pointed to the screen.

“I know. I have to give the security codes something to do while I access the database.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. I was up all night figuring this out, and I’m still not positive it will work.”

As if all night was a long time to come up with this type of program.

Taylor pushed the Send command, then sat back and watched the screen. Her eyes darted across the rows of numbers that returned. “It didn’t work. The signal bounced back as inaccessible.”

“Check your input for a mistake.”

Her foot jiggled against the floor in frustration. “There isn’t a mistake. It’s …” She sat forward in her seat, and her fingers flew over the panels again. “It’s something that someone else did to it. So I can’t turn off the QGP right after I left, but I bet I can turn it off after he left, and I happen to know the date that was.”

Echo had no idea what she was talking about but didn’t want to distract her by asking for explanations.

Taylor completed typing a sequence of commands, then copied and attached her earlier equations to it. “Let’s try it now.”

She hit the Send command, then clenched the armrests of her chair. This time when the numbers returned, they marched across the screen declaring the job was done.

“Bingo,” she whispered.

Another new word. One that meant success.

Echo helped her with the shutdown functions, then turned his attention to his sensor. No one occupied the hallway in front of their room, but several people walked nearby in the next corridor. He and Taylor would have to wait until it was empty. Once they were in the main corridor, they’d hope for a clear path, or at least an empty room to dash into until they had another clear path.

It wasn’t the best plan; and as he sat here watching his sensor, he could think of more and more problems with it. Still, what choice did they have?

Sheridan sat on the floral couch and discussed the role of women in society.

“High heels weren’t some sort of punishment inflicted by men on the female gender. Women chose to wear them because they thought high heels made them look elegant. No, really. They even paid a lot of money for them. Well, I don’t know why anyone thought pointy toes looked elegant. They just did.”