Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel
Michael Bunker
Synchronic
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright owner listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.
The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead; to any place, past, present, or future; or to any time travel technology; is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Foreword copyright © 2014 by Nick Cole. Used by permission of the author.
“The Santa Anna Gold” by Michael Bunker, copyright © 2014 by Michael Bunker. Used by permission of the author.
“Corrections” by Susan Kaye Quinn, copyright © 2014 by Susan Kaye Quinn. Used by permission of the author.
“Hereafter” by Samuel Peralta, copyright © 2014 by Samuel Peralta. Used by permission of the author.
“The Time Traveller’s Sonnet” from How More Beautiful You Are, copyright © 2012 Samuel B. Peralta. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Reentry Window” by Eric Tozzi, copyright © 2014 by Eric Tozzi. Used by permission of the author.
“The Swimming Pool of the Universe” by Nick Cole, copyright © 2014 by Nick Cole. Used by permission of the author.
“The River” by Jennifer Ellis, copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Ellis. Used by permission of the author.
“A Word in Pompey’s Ear” by Christopher G. Nuttall, copyright © 2014 by Christopher G. Nuttall. Used by permission of the author.
“Rock or Shell” by Ann Christy, copyright © 2014 by Ann Christy. Used by permission of the author.
“The Mirror” by Irving Belateche, copyright © 2014 by Irving Belateche. Used by permission of the author.
“Reset” by MeiLin Miranda, copyright © 2014 by MeiLin Miranda. Used by permission of the author.
“The Laurasians” by Isaac Hooke, copyright © 2014 by Isaac Hooke. Used by permission of the author.
“The First Cut” by Edward W. Robertson, copyright © 2014 by Edward W. Robertson. Used by permission of the author.
“The Dark Age” by Jason Gurley, copyright © 2014 by Jason Gurley. First published by Jason Gurley in 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Edited by David Gatewood (www.lonetrout.com)
Cover art and design by Jason Gurley (www.jasongurley.com)
Print and ebook formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)
To those who live in the present
But wouldn’t mind an escape now and then
STORY SYNOPSES
The Santa Anna Gold (Michael Bunker)
A father tries to help his son—the only family member he has left—pursue his interest in finding the legendary Santa Anna Gold. The only problem is: the boy wants to go back in time in order to locate it. Sometimes the things a father will do for an only child are limitless.
Corrections (Susan Kaye Quinn)
Time traveling through murderers’ minds to prevent the crimes that landed them on Death Row? This is what psychologist Ian Webb lives for. But his training with the Department of Corrections, along with fifteen successfully resolved cases, is of little help when the original timeline proves to be nothing like the court records show. The past can only be changed so much, and pushing it too far won’t just fail to prevent a murder—it might erase his patient from the timeline altogether.
Hereafter (Samuel Peralta)
Cpl. Caitlyn McAdams returns home from war, back to her family and the life she knew—but she doesn’t return whole. How can she forget the man she left behind—a man she’d met only once before—a casualty of a roadside bomb, dying in front of her? And then, one day, he comes back.
Reentry Window (Eric Tozzi)
Space exploration is dead and buried. But a strange atmospheric anomaly on Mars single-handedly resurrects the program, giving birth to the first manned mission to the Red Planet. For astronaut Brett Lockwood it’s a dream come true. A chance to make history. But what he discovers is a window through time that will change the entire course of space exploration—decades before he was ever born.
The Swimming Pool of the Universe (Nick Cole)
War, remembrance and a grenade play havoc with the time machine we all carry inside ourselves as Private Dexter Keith battles alien spiders on the surface of a spinning asteroid beyond the edge of the solar system.
The River (Jennifer Ellis)
Destroyed by guilt and sorrow over a childhood mistake, Sarah Williams lives alone and buries her grief in long-distance running and triathlons. But when Sarah’s running partner invents a time travel device, Sarah is determined to change her past, even if it means living twice—and betraying the man she loves.
A Word in Pompey’s Ear (Christopher G. Nuttall)
To Julia, a young student of the Roman Empire, the past seems a realm of missed opportunities. But when she is sent back in time to meet Pompey the Great, she discovers that changing history may not be as easy as it seems.
Rock or Shell (Ann Christy)
Everyone wishes they could change something in their past. Whether it’s taking back that embarrassing comment at an office party, or going back to save a life lost too soon, we all wish for the impossible at least once. But when too many people are given that power—and no ability to control their fleeting thoughts of change—what happens is more than chaos. It could be the end.
The Mirror (Irving Belateche)
Peter Cooper sells the past for a living. He started out as a poor boy from Indiana and now he’s a successful antique dealer in Manhattan. But he’s about to find out that there’s more to the past than inanimate objects. Sometimes the past refuses to die.
Reset (MeiLin Miranda)
Sandy’s best friend Catherine changed when she turned sixteen. She withdrew from life, and spent all her time drawing pictures of seven children she said would never exist. Thirty-four years later, Sandy finds out why.
The Laurasians (Isaac Hooke)
Horatio Horace, paleontologist extraordinaire, discovers that time travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—when he comes face to face with the living and breathing versions of the fossils he has studied his entire life. And they are hungry.
The First Cut (Edward W. Robertson)
In the future, there are many parallel Earths. Only one of them has time travel. Known as Primetime, its criminals break into the pasts of other worlds, far beyond the reach of conventional police. Blake Din is the newest graduate of the agency tasked with stopping them, but he’s already on the verge of washing out. And now, one of his fellow recruits has just gone rogue.
The Dark Age (Jason Gurley)
On the day she was born, he left for the stars. He watches her grow up on screens. Misses her first words, her first steps. She’s never kissed his scratchy cheek, or fallen asleep on his shoulder. He’s never wiped away her tears, or sung her to sleep. Now she’s a toddler, and the crew of the Arecibo is about to enter hibernation sleep for one hundred and fifty years. And when he wakes, his family will be gone.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Nick Cole
The Santa Anna Gold (Michael Bunker)
Corrections (Susan Kaye Quinn)
Hereafter (S
amuel Peralta)
Reentry Window (Eric Tozzi)
The Swimming Pool of the Universe (Nick Cole)
The River (Jennifer Ellis)
A Word in Pompey’s Ear (Christopher Nuttall)
Rock or Shell (Ann Christy)
The Mirror (Irving Belateche)
Reset (MeiLin Miranda)
The Laurasians (Isaac Hooke)
The First Cut (Edward W. Robertson)
The Dark Age (Jason Gurley)
Afterword
Foreword
by Nick Cole
Time.
The great human enemy. Maybe the greatest. It’s beaten everyone so far. The scoreboard doesn’t lie:
Time: an immense, incalculable number
Us: 0
Forget Caesar and Alexander the Great, and while you’re at it, name any empire: time’s beaten them all. It’s beating us every day. That thing we meant to do goes undone again, and we tell ourselves, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll get it done. Tomorrow I’ll do that thing I’ve always meant to do. Tomorrow I’ll live my life, but right now I’ve got something more important to do.” Don’t we always find ourselves there, undone and too late? Our chance has slipped away, again, and eventually it’s forever and we’ve never managed to do all the things we meant to do. What did Shakespeare’s Macbeth say about time? I think it was something like:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
Rough stuff. Time and consequences are inevitable.
But wait…
Along come a bunch of crazy science fiction writers saying, “Wait a minute. Not so fast.” Scribbling, they cry their warnings, out of both sides of their mouths (or on the same sheets of paper, to be more precise): “Maybe we can conquer time.”
Crazy, huh?
They said that about the bottom of the sea—and, oh yeah, the moon also. They said we could go there if first we dreamed. But c’mon, we’ve never been to those places.
So why the time travel fantasy? I think it has something to do with our desire to get it right, our very human desire to avoid the critical mistakes. To take a vacation in the mysterious kingdom of WhatMightHaveBeen. We all do it. We do it on Mondays as we drive to work. We ask ourselves what that other road, the road less traveled (we say, as we turn into the place we’ll be going to for the foreseeable future) might have looked like. What if we’d done this, or what if we’d said that other thing?
That’s a very human question. If you ever feel all alone in the world and much different than the company you find yourself in, simply remember that everyone in the room has felt that way and asked those questions of themselves at some point in their lives. Every so often you meet the guy who worked at Google way back when and quit because it seemed like they were wasting time cataloguing this thing called the Internet. Besides, they weren’t paying much at the time. Who knew?
If not Google, then it’s the someone who claims to have invented the hula hoop or male hairspray. The millions almost made—if only.
What we’re saying is that, if we could master time, why, things might be quite different. Very different indeed. We’d probably be a lot more successful and much happier. That’s what we like to tell ourselves. Sadly, that doesn’t make for good science fiction. No. Those same writers who’ve promised us it might be possible to leap around in time like Golden Retrievers down at the lake haven’t done much to ensure us that we’ll be happier in doing so. In fact, more often than not they warn us that we’ll make things much, much worse. Far worse. We’ll step on a butterfly and wipe out Van Gogh or some such.
Who knows?
But there’s a time machine inside all of us. In fact, maybe we are that time machine. Moving forward, exploring the future. Able to go back and relive the good moments—and even sometimes make peace with the bad. Perhaps, in some very safe way (compared to actual time travel and all its quantum trap doors), we’re just trying to get it right. And maybe we should just leave it at that. Maybe memory is enough of a time machine.
So we’ve written these stories about Time Travel. I’ve read them, and I want to warn you about some of them first. I want to warn you that you’re not going to like some of them. These stories won’t encourage you to finish your degree in physics and get cracking on that time machine you’d like to build out in the garage. They won’t inspire you to return to the past and confess that unconfessed love to the someone that got away. To bet big on Google, or Secretariat, or even George Lucas. No, these stories more often than not are going to break your heart and leave a giant gaping hole in your dreams of going back and learning to play the guitar—of touring with Zeppelin.
Time’s a dangerous place. Always has been. Remember when I said it was undefeated? So far, it still is. You’ll find out when you read “Hereafter” by Samuel Peralta. I just wept when I put that one down. He’s captured the heartbreak of humanity and time travel, and unlocked why it might not be a good thing to go messing around back there. And then again, maybe love hurts no matter what. And maybe, Samuel reminds us, maybe it’s also worth it, too.
“Reset” by MeiLin Miranda deftly dispels the illusion of the time travel fantasy of youth, wisdom, and the chance to do it all again and again until you get it right. She, too, breaks your heart with a beautiful take on the saddest words of all: “what might have been.”
“The Dark Age” is a very personal gift from Jason Gurley. It’s about him and his daughter. Someone once posited intelligent space travel and the ability to know it when we see it out there in the big dark that is the Universe, by the phrase, “you shall know us by our velocity.” Jason Gurley shows us that time, speed and distance, even on a galactic scale, are insignificant compared to love and its power to reach out into the unknown.
In “Rock or Shell” by the talented Ann Christy, we tackle the philosophical mindtrap that emerges when the genie in the bottle—the wish-fulfillment ability that mastery of time travel would enable—is potentially extended to all of us. Except, as she wickedly points out, not everyone wants to erase the mistakes they’ve made. And some might want to just go ahead and erase everything.
Michael Bunker tells us that time travel’s all in your head in “The Santa Anna Gold,” his brilliant and classic homage to the time-looting adventure (and a clever and perception-bending tale). The problem with metaphysical time travel, as he points out, is you might get trapped there. The exact meaning of “there” being up for debate and for you, the reader, to decide.
Jennifer Ellis’s “The River” takes us on a clever, complex, and desperate journey down time's flow as she steers this tale of fractured lives like a master guide shooting the rapids of quantum theory and boldly confronting the terminal waterfall that is the “should we?” of time travel.
“The First Cut” by Edward W. Robertson is a gritty time-cop drama with all the taut tension of a great Saturday night noir. I can easily see this as the beginning of a series, and there isn't a publisher who should pass up a chance to lock down a six-book deal on this fully realized and interesting milieu of crime and time.
Christopher Nuttall, in “A Word in Pompey's Ear,” displays an awesome grasp of history and shows us that despite hindsight, victory is not assured, even if you know how all the cards are dealt. Rich history and theoretical musings offer a well-crafted romp through the birth of imperial Rome, guided by a gifted author.
If you liked Jurassic Park, then you’re going to love Isaac Hooke's dash through the prehistoric in “The Laurasians.” I
t’s a feat he pulls off quite capably with both wit and terror, all of it based on a Choose Your Own Adventure he read as a boy. I'd love to see what he might do with The Mystery of Chimney Rock or Deadwood City or even The Third Planet from Altair.
In Susan Kaye Quinn’s “Corrections” we find out that time travel and therapy might just be the answer to society’s problems. If only someone were there to help you, way back when, to make the right choice, why, everything might be just as awful. This is an excellent short story that almost feels like a procedural, and I can easily see this as a full-length, genre-spanning novel for a very damaged main character.
In “Reentry Window” by Eric Tozzi we find—and I’m just going to be vague here because the story is sublimely brilliant; you’ll see in the last moments—that the best explorers are truly intrepid, even understanding the potential of discovery to revolutionize cultural zeitgeist.
