Frangible Time
March 9
“Okay,” he says. “Look, it’s gonna take me a little bit of time to get the sample invalidated. I think I can go back and still get everything taken care of before I lose it completely. You have something else you need to do in the meantime, though.”
“What?” I ask. I’m [...]
March 8
It fits. It fits perfectly, except… “Reynolds. This is important. Katie’s your great-grandmother on what side?”
“My mom’s mom’s side,” he says. “What are you getting at?”
“And Katie, did she ever tell you about Ray?” I ask. “In the future. When she was your great-grandma, that is.”
“She died when [...]
March 7
“The red center, for lack of any better phrasing, is a wound in time,” Reynolds says. “If anything, that’s about the best gauge of how much time I have left. Care to throw out a guess?”
I do a little bit of math in my head. It’s been about sixteen hours since we [...]
March 6
The Steamer is bigger now, as if it weren’t big enough before; it flows out from the part in his coat, spilling out into the world. If I didn’t know it was invisible to everyone else, I’d expect it to cause some panic. Even knowing this, I lean back in my chair. [...]
March 5
“Fine,” I say. “What do you want me to do? I’ve never even seen a Steamer before you came along.”
“You…” Reynold’s eyes widen, almost to the point that they’re about to jump out of his skull. “I’m… what year is this?”
“Two thousand,” I say. “Turn of the millennium. [...]
March 4
“I was only back a few months, relative to this point,” he says. “I was just going to have a look at how my great grandparents got together, and see if I could use that as a little bit of inspiration. See, I’m a writer, and in my time dramatic genealogy is a [...]
March 3
Anomaly. “You mean the Steamer?”
He pauses. “Still not the safe word,” he says, frowning. “But yeah, you call them Steamers. They’re… timers. Indicators that the person they’re attached to is in danger of being erased from time.”
Holy crap. That’s why I thought that thing was evil. It’s something [...]