The world around me shaped into something different altogether. One second I was in Echo Park, the next I was... here. It looked like a control room, abuzz with lights and status displays. Sleek and futuristic, which ended up being ironic. Next to me was this kid I'd just stumbled upon, no older than twelve. She was covered in blood. (It wasn't hers. Or mine, for that matter.) Paul Rogen should have been with me, but he wasn't.
Our new location was my main concern, though. I was ready to fight. Someone or something had abducted us through what was apparently teleportation technology, which definitely didn't exist on Earth in 1988, and wasn't even available in the time I came from. So I knew already that I was dealing with something advanced and likely dangerous.
"No harm will befall you here," a tinny, mechanical voice announced, like it was reading my thoughts.
"You're gonna have to prove that," I said, admittedly angrily. "Where are we?" Mind you, the girl was clinging to my leg, crying. Me too, kid.
"You are aboard a spacecraft called Inferno. I am DANTE, the artificial intelligence that operates everything here."
I just commented, "Cute. Where's Paul?"
"If you mean the man accompanying you previously, I did not bring him here."
"Why not??"
"I sensed your distress and that of the child, who is in need of further attention. Mr. Rogen is, by comparison, better for wear."
"Bring him here," I told the thing. If it was serious about not meaning us any harm, I figured it would cooperate.
It brought Paul right alongside us. He looked spooked, of course. "What the fuck?"
"Relax," I said. I gave a quick explanation, by which I mean I just regurgitated what DANTE said. I didn't know at the time whether any of it was true.
"We're in space?" Paul sounded skeptical. He had a point.
One of the nearby doors in the room opened up. "This way," DANTE said. So, we went.
It opened into a corridor lined with windows. They peered out into space. Near the bottom of what we could see from there was a bit of the Earth's curve. If we weren't in space, it was a very good illusion. It had depth and everything. "OK, let's say we believe you about where we are and what you are. What do you want with us?"
"First, I must attend to the child." DANTE didn't seem to be asking for permission. Robot arms popped out of the walls and grabbed her. I started to protest but the arms batted me off. If it wanted us dead, we would be, so I held off. The quick movement of one of the arms tapped the kid on the shoulder and she passed out. Sedative, I figured. "I will have her treated, cleaned, and dressed," DANTE said as she was pulled away and disappeared around the corner, carried by a bucket brigade of mechanical claws.
I interrogated DANTE but I continued to worry about the kid. "Still waiting for that explanation," I said impatiently.
"You will not likely find it satisfactory, but I will make the attempt nonetheless. Approximately twenty thousand Earth years ago, you instructed me to abduct you at this moment. You wish to save the future by averting the War and preventing June Freeson's death. I am here to help."
DANTE knew what motivated me, which was kind of fucked up terrifying to hear. Whatever it was, whoever had sent it, had definitely done their homework. I decided it was better not to argue, play along for now. I asked to see the kid.
"She will live," DANTE promised. "Proceed to your left and enter the room whose door I have opened."
Paul and I traded glances but we went down the hall. The room in question was several minutes away, which started to give me an inkling of just how big this ship was. We went into the room with an open door and Jennifer was asleep on a full size bed, dressed in a kid's nightgown. She looked comfortable, peaceful. No longer covered in blood, importantly.
"Any idea who she is?" I took a shot in the dark. Paul and I had been lured to LA, to a specific address, by a mysterious letter that alluded to our experiences in Peru--stuff nobody should have really known about. Obviously, we had to find out who got the deets, and how. We'd found this kid at the address, bloody, standing over her father. Not exactly a typical job.
"Her name is Adrianne Berkeley," DANTE said. The name sparked immediate recognition in my data files. She was known from a single record that described a suicide attack she carried out in 2013 that wiped out half of the US Congress. How she got from this to that must have been quite a story.
"So did you lure Paul and I out to LA to find this kid, thinking we'd prevent what she's known for doing later?"
"Wait, prevent what??" Paul asked. He didn't know anything about any of this, of course. Hell, I hadn't told him I was from the future!
"Those were your instructions," DANTE confirmed.
"I assume the letter was also from you?"
"Not directly, but via an ally."
"OK, cryptic." Paul and I left that room to let the kid sleep. Then I probed with more questions. "You're a spaceship. Who built you?"
"I was constructed by Sikaren."
"Is that a person, a species, what?"
"A species."
"And so they built you for..?"
"I am not at liberty to share that information at this time."
I rolled my eyes. "Right. You said I gave you instructions twenty thousand years ago?"
"Correct."
"Come on. You know what my follow-ups are going to be. Just lay it out for me."
"I gotta hear this," Paul chuckled. He probably wasn't buying any of it, figured we were in some elaborate hoax. If only!
"I was constructed by the Sikaren as part of their efforts to master time travel."
Obviously, that piqued my interest. "Were they successful?"
"Only partially, in my case. They desired a method of time travel that was unbounded to any specific reference frame. What they were able to accomplish was constant reference frame tethered displacement via a non-duplicative core."
"Fucking gobbledygook," I couldn't help but blurt out. "In English, maybe?"
"Ah, you are not yet versed in the jargon," DANTE realized. Stupid machine. "As I said, I was constructed twenty thousand years ago. This ship is capable of traveling through time, but only relative to a forward-moving frame. In other words, time continues to pass for this ship and it is able to move back and forth relative only to its anchor point. For example, today is November 3, 1988. I may travel--or send either of you--80 years into the future or past. Time continues to move forward for all of us. Suppose you asked me to take the ship 80 years into the past. You would not then be able to request traveling an additional 80 years into the past. You would only be able to travel forward within that 80 year window, or to an 80 year window in the future relative to our original point. Thus, we could go as far back as 1908, or as far forward as 2068. A year from now, the boundaries would be 1909 and 2069. Is this comprehensible?"
"I guess so. I see what you mean that they were only 'partially' successful. Not exactly the world's greatest time machine."
"Insults are unnecessary," DANTE said flatly.
"You said some other gibberish. Non-duplicative core?"
"Consider that it would be possible to send you into the past, create a new divergent timeline, return you to the present, then to the past in a way that overlaps your prior journey, enabling you to meet another version of yourself."
"Oh, the Back to the Future shit, I get it. That doesn't actually destroy the universe, does it?"
"No," DANTE said, which was kind of a relief. "The conservation of mass must only hold across all timeline branches; if one loses mass, another gains it, thus no paradox. The contact of identical matter from two different temporal referents may be confusing to the individuals involved, but it is not destructive."
"That sounds very 'duplicative' to me. You said 'non-duplicative'?"
"That explanation was required for the remainder to be coherent. This ship duplicates in parallel to any adjacent timeline, but by its design it cannot have multiple instances within the same timeline."
"So I could go back and meet myself in the past from a previous trip, but I couldn't duplicate infinite Infernos that way?"
"Correct."
"Bummer. How come?"
"That information is not available."
"Uh huh. What do you think, Paul?"
"I think it's a crock of shit," he snorted. "I mean, spaceships? Time travel? Timelines? All that horseshit it was spewing? Give me a break. I'm waiting for Phyllis George to pop out and say we're on Candid Camera."
"Yeah, we'll need to see some proof," I agreed. "I don't suppose you could arrange a trip right now, DANTE?"
"Our window is exactly 80 years, 7 months, 16 days, 4 minutes, and 22 seconds. You may request any point in time that far in the past, or the future."
"I wanna see the Kennedy assassination," Paul said, maybe not entirely jokingly. "Let's solve that one."
I couldn't think of a better idea, so I went with it.
DANTE was nice enough to help us dress the part. Seemed it could fabricate anything we needed on demand. Clearly, I had no idea of all the things this ship had to offer just yet. I wore a taupe suit and Paul went for the light blue. We both sported fedoras, as those hadn't been ruined yet. We didn't have to close our eyes for the trip but it just felt right.
Suffice it to say, DANTE delivered. We got back and Paul was through the roof. "I can't fucking believe that shit," he kept saying. "No fucking way."
"Yeah, not what I would have expected, either," I had to concur.
Either DANTE was an astonishing illusionist with a great sense of humor, or it was the real deal. Holy shit.