Jason stood in front of the mirror in the changing room, disgust lingering on  his face.  He was swaddled in what he thought was one of the more demeaning and hideous uniforms he'd ever had to don in his short but illustrious career as a waiter.  He was trying his hardest to get a leg up in the world.  He'd been applying to graduate school all across the country to gain a foothold in the world of fine arts.

    It was a pointless career path, his mother often told him.  He'd tried to explain to her how he felt about the matter.  It wasn't that he particularly wanted to show his art in a gallery, nor did he want to make any sort of grand world changing statement through his admittedly sub-par but good enough paintings.  It was just that he liked those paintings.  He enjoyed creating them, and it was the only thing in the world that he thought he would ever be remotely successful at.  He was particularly hopeless at math and science.  History and English just seemed like too much effort.

    At least he was moderately successful at painting.  He had made it through art school mostly unscathed.  The biggest stumbling block had been a nearly incomprehensible essay he'd been made to complete in order to graduate.  He had somehow managed to muddle through it, and from there he hadn't known where to go.  He could only think of continuing on with school and even more increasingly menial part time jobs.

    This time he had landed employment at the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant.  He worked the champagne brunch almost every Sunday, busing tables in a hideous and ill fitting green vest adorned with white trim.  He had yet to figure out how the vest even fit in with the decor of the restaurant's interior or anything else about the place.

    "Stop admiring yourself in front of the mirror, Jason!"  He heard a distinct voice ring out from behind him.

    It was Jody: prim and proper Jody: Jody, who never did anything wrong and was always getting extra tips on the side for her over the top and bubbly personality.  Everybody loved Jody.

    Everybody, that was, except for Jason.  He found her constant ebullience irritating and insufferable and completely fake.  He may have been the only  one in the whole of the world that did.  He was nice to her like most everybody was though.  He did not want to be accused of being cold hearted.

    "Oh, stop preening!'  she said as she crept u from behind and squeezed his shoulders.  "Show me your shiny green suit!"

    He turned around with a  barely controlled scowl.  Despite his reluctance to like her, he did his best to be fake nice in return to her fake niceness.

    "C'mon Sweetie!," She prodded him.  "Show me that smile!  C'mon!"

    His scowl contorted into a toothy grimace, and she didn't seem to notice the hideous look that adorned his features.  He was only thankful that he didn't have to look at hit himself in the mirror he had just been facing.

    "There you go!"  She squealed in delight and clapped her hands together.

    "Come on, Jason," she slapped him on the back and her voice took on an impossibly cheery tone.  "It's a beautiful day outside!  There's no reason to be so down."

    He resisted the urge to strangle the woman.  If there was anything he hated more than his job, it was people that tried to force a happy mood onto him.  Especially when there was no particular reason to be happy.

    "I'm going to change my pants," he declared loudly instead and lay his hands on  his belt buckle, slowly easing the buckle away from the leather and watching Jody's increasing discomfort with relish.

    Her hand fluttered up to her lips as Jason wagged his bushy eyebrows at her.  She fled the room in terror and brushed by another bus boy, startling him out of a slacker like daze.

    "Hey, man," he mumbled in Jody's direction as she stormed away.

    "What's her damage?"  He turned his attention towards Jason, who's hands were still poised on his belt buckle, ready to drop his trousers at the slightest provocation.

  He brushed away his shaggy hair and arched an eyebrow at Jason.

 "Jody, man?  Really?  You've got to be kidding," he said in a long, slow, drawn-out drawl.

   "Hey, it's not like that!"  Jason held up his hands in disgust.  "Seriously, I just wanted to scare her away."

    "With your dick?"

    "Yeah, you know how she is." Jason grinned.

    "Hey, c'mon, she's nice!"

    "I know she's nice, Ned," Jason replied.  "But C'mon, she's a little off.  I think she might be an alien."

    Ned snorted a short burst of laughter.  "Yeah, I think you may be right."

    "There is such a thing as too nice!"

 
*****


    The  Baum family was staying at a Marriott close to Disneyland.  It had been mother Baum's idea for that year's family vacation, and nothing seemed to be going right.  They had not been given the triple A discount, because they had forgotten to bring their triple A cards, the youngest son had been denied passage on a roller coaster because he was too short, and they had to wait in many long lines in order to partake in their favorite amusement park attractions.  It wasn't worth it she thought.  It wasn't any fun, and It's a Small World, and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride were vastly overrated in her opinion.

    "Look!"  Father Baum, Jerry, spoke up from his spot at the small table where he was seated with his nose buried in his lap-top.  "We could go to brunch at Knott's Berry farm!"

    "Why would we do that?" the mother, Esther, snarled from her position, seated in bed, with a scowl on her face.  Her long black hair was piled upon her head in one big mass of tangles.  Jerry did his best to avoid looking at her.  Despite looking like a hideous mess, she had still managed to find fault with his innocent suggestion.  He wondered vaguely what on Earth he had been thinking to become ensnared with a woman as horrible as his wife and her family.

    "I just thought it would be fun," Jerry muttered in a meek way.

    She laughed at him, and asked why they didn't just have the free continental breakfast that came with the hotel room, and he repeated that it might be fun.

    "We can't just stay cooped up in here all the time, Esther.  We should get out and see the sights."

    She glared ponderously at him for a moment, and Jerry withered under the strength of it.  In the end she let out an exasperated sigh and instead of dressing him down, conceded to his idea.

    "If you must have it your way, Jerry," she muttered caustically.  "I don't see why we always have to do it your way."

    Jerry smiled at her, and thanked her and told her that it would be fun.  He didn't bother to mention that they almost never did things his way if she could help it.  It would only lead to a big argument as it usually did.


*****


  It was Oscar Rodriguez' birthday.  He wasn't feeling happy about it though.  His feet hurt and his back ached from the many long hours he worked at the construction site.  The thought of getting one year older and still having to work at a back breaking job was not making his sour mood any better. He could only think of one thing that would make his birthday even remotely pleasant, and that was a long day off without the distraction of wife or his four children.  It wasn't to be.

    Rosa, his wife, was flitting brightly around the kitchen gathering up the children.  Jose, the middle child was grumpily complaining about a day filled with family bonding at an amusement park.  He was so over it.  It wasn't any fun when he'd been there a million times.  It was more like routine.  David, the oldest boy wasn't much more enthusiastic.  He would have rather stayed at home with the house to himself instead of the bustling drama that usually surrounded him.  The two sisters, Jenny, the youngest, and David's twin, Mimi, weren't bothered either way.  They were excited to get out of the house.

    "Don't you have some boyfriend to go meet?" the eighteen year old David asked his sister as he stood slumped outside the only bathroom in the household which they all shared.

    "Who says I don't?"  Mimi replied as she penciled in her eyebrows.

    "What are you talking about, Mi?"  David arched one of his own eyebrows at her.  It had its desired effect even though his didn't quite reach the same epic proportions.

    "Maybe." she turned and faced him with an impish grin.  "Just maybe I arranged to meet him at the park?  Huh?  How about that, Mister smarty pants?  I'm not as dumb as I look, am I?"

    David smiled ruefully at her.  His sister had a long history of getting involved with the wrong type of men.

    "Yes,  you are," he said as he stared down at the floor to  hide his grin.

    "That's not funny!"  She gasped at him then marched across the hall to swat him on the shoulder.

    He started giggling at her and couldn't stop despite the swatting.  She finally gave up in a huff and marched off down the hallway.

     "Jose!  Jenny!"  He shouted loudly.  In as small a house as it was, he was sure that they could probably hear him wherever they may be.  "The bathroom is free!"  He chuckled to himself one last time and walked down the hallway in the opposite direction as the one his sister had taken.
    
*****

   There was something brewing.  The sky above Southern California.  The day was shrouded in ominous and foreboding clouds.  Mary Smith sat nervously on a park bench awaiting her contact.  Something was going to happen that day: something big.  She wrung her hands nervously and peered about at the park staff passing by.  There was still an hour or two before the park opened, and the tourists for the day started to stream in.  Her staff at the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant was well underway to getting things set up for that day's Champagne brunch buffet.  She didn't know who she was supposed to be meeting or what the purpose of the meeting was.  She was half tempted to just ignore the note that she had found in her locker that morning, but she had been curious.  Curiosity made way for fear; however, once the time had come to meet her secret admirer, or whatever the case may be.  She had a hard time believing that anybody would admire her.  She was short with mousy brown hair, and she knew that nobody liked her.  Nobody ever did because she was a nonentity.  She tended to fade into the background and not be noticed.  She told herself that was what she wanted.  She wanted to come and do her job and go home again without anybody taking notice of her.   It was easier that way.  There was no conflict.  There was however a distinct lack of friendship, and Mary was feeling it.  She was lonely.  She was lonely for friends, and she was lonely for companionship of the male variety.  She told herself she wasn't, but the truth was that when she went home every night and popped a pre-made meal into the microwave all she wanted was to have someone there to greet her.

  And maybe cook something.

  It was with that hope that she had taken the note to heart.  She had made up elaborate stories in her mind the moment she set her eyes on the unsigned missive.  The strokes were short and efficient.  The scrawl of a man, she thought to herself.  It couldn't be any other thing.  She had hummed through the morning in an exceedingly good mood, much to the consternation of the rest of the crew.  She was usually calm and got the job done, but she wasn't chipper or even what one would call pleasant.  She was good at her job; nothing more and nothing less.  Even Jody had been outshone at one point by her boss's good mood.  Nobody was more pleased to see the surge of disappointment and jealously flicker across Jody's face than Jason, who stood, arms crossed against the wall, with smug satisfaction plastered all over his face.

  That had been then though, and that time had passed.  So many other options than a secret crush had crossed her mind in the final few minutes until the meeting time.

     And then it was time.  Her breath caught in her throat, and the thoughts of doubt and fear and excitement fled her mind and left it blank.  Her limbs felt numb.

    He arrived without fanfare.  She hadn't seen  him approach, and yet he was there, standing just in the periphery of her vision.  He was a tall, blond man, wearing black jeans and a black jacket.  He was wearing a maroon colored shirt, unbuttoned, and a white undershirt beneath it.  He smiled benevolently at her.
    
    "Nice day," he said to her.

    Mary gulped down whatever she was going to answer and stared up at him with silent awe apparent on her face.  He only chuckled fondly at her.

    "May I sit down?"  He gestured towards the empty side of the bench where she was sitting.

    She stared dumbly up at him, and he waited patiently for her to regain her wits.

    "Oh, yes of course!" Her brain was finally jump started, and the words came flooding out.  "Please do!  I'm just...I'm just waiting for...someone?"

     She said the last bit with uncertainty.  After all, he could be the man who had left the note, or he could just be a stranger who wanted to sit down and discuss the weather.  She had done enough jumping to conclusions for one morning.

*****

      They were fighting.  They were always fighting.  It had become a way of life for her mother and her step father, and there was nothing in particular that Catherine could do about it.  So she sat in her room in despair.  This time the argument wasn't about her, and that was a relief and an improvement upon the usual fare.

    Catherine was her name, and she was an only child.  She had no friends and no hobbies.  Her family life wasn't optimal, so she spent her time fully immersed in her school work.  It was what she would have been doing had the constant and unending screaming from her mother and step father not permeated the inner sanctum of her room.  The privacy of her safe place had once again been shattered by people who had no sense of anything other than themselves.  She didn't relish the thought of what a day like this would even turn out to be like, but she was starting to have an idea that it wasn't going to be anything good, and if she could have hidden away from the world alone in her room forever with nothing to keep her company except for her school books then she would have.

*****


    The Mother Thing, as Jerry had taken to thinking of her, was angry already.  She had spent most of the morning corralling her extended family in order to inform them of the change in plans.  None of them were especially happy about it either.  They were milling about in the lobby, a loudly complaining cacophony of whining voices that, Jerry thought, could probably be heard from miles way.

    He surveyed the scene before him, his heart heavy with disappointment and dissatisfaction.  How he had ended up with such a woman was beyond him.  She was loud, obnoxious, and forever complaining about things mere mortals would never give any passing notice whatsoever.  She belittled him at every turn.  It was humiliating and demoralizing, and it had always been that way.

    This was the day, though.  This was the day he had finally gotten his way.  He had no idea why, but he wasn't going to start complaining about it.  His voice would only be lost among the complaints of his darling wife and her family anyway.

    "Jerry, come here!"  The Mother Thing squawked at him from across the room, her high pitched nasally whine ringing out through the building.

    He shuddered and picked his way through the crowd of fellow tourists and on-lookers who's attentions had suddenly become fully transfixed upon Jerry and his impending shame.

    "I hope you're happy now," she addressed him angrily and loudly enough that every curious bystander could hear, and even some not so curious bystanders as well.  Some of them chose to stay and shift uncomfortably in their seats, while others fled the area for a more quiet venue to enjoy their early morning meals.

    "I hope you're happy, Jerry," The Mother Thing repeated herself snippily as she made  a sweeping gesture towards the scowling faces of her extended family.

    "Everybody was looking forward to their bagels," she continued.  "You don't want to know how many people Don had to ask to get a new toaster in here.  The one they had out here wouldn't toast!  Do you believe it?"  Her belligerent tone of voice only increased in volume as her complaint reached epic proportions of undue hysteria.

    "The service in this hotel is awful!  I have had nothing but trouble!"  She nearly shouted then.  Several employees at the buffet turned and stared meekly and apologetically at her, even though they knew there had actually been nothing wrong with the toaster in the first place; at least nothing a careful eye and a second toast wouldn't have cured.  An entire clan of loudly complaining imbeciles had brought the manager running though.  They had spent half the morning and a large wad of petty cash, that had been set aside for the crew's pizza party at the end of the month, tracking down a toaster that was to the exact specifications that Esther had ordained.  Even then her clan had not been satiated.  The toaster was green.  They tried their best to avoid dealing with green kitchen appliances if they could at all help it.

    As Jerry stood there and listened to his wife relay the story of the toaster he was wondering, for the first time that day, when a meteor was going to come crashing down from the sky to land on his balding head and put him out of his misery once and for all.  He was sure it wouldn't be the last time either.  It was one of his favorite pass times...to sit around and imagine ways he could accidentally and freakishly die so he wouldn't be stuck in the nightmare that was his marriage.

*****


    "I said it's a nice day," he repeated his earlier statement to Mary, who looked up at him, not believing that she would ever catch the eye of such a gorgeous stranger.  He smiled calmly at her, awaiting her reply, and she gazed into his eyes.  She found she could not look away.  They were mesmerizing, those eyes, icy blue and cold like a glacier, yet full of fire and determination all the same.

    "Yes, yes, a lovely day," Mary felt herself replying, though she had no conscious thought on the matter.  She did not notice that the words didn't belong to her anymore.  She couldn't think of anything except the gorgeous man before her...and his steely blue eyes.
    
    She didn't notice the dark clouds building up all around, and if she had, she might have only attributed them to the early morning of a fall day in California: clouds that looked ominous but would eventually dissipate to reveal the ever-present bright sunlight.

    "That's a good girl," he chuckled at her.  Yes.  She had been the right choice, so pliable, so easy to manipulate.  She was the perfect patsy to put their plan into motion.

    John Arker's major goal in life had been to become a Time Detective.  Ever since he was a child it was his dream.  He had graduated from the Detective Academy with honors at the age of twenty eight.  He had been at the top of his class, and he thought he would have been good at his job.  Everybody thought he would be good at his job.  As it were, his dream come true had ended up as more of a nightmare.

    The case of Alrice Van Die Welt had been a disaster from the start.  Not only had it been a public relations disaster, prosecuting innocent people for crimes they did not commit never seemed to go down well with the general public, whether for their own good or not, but on top of that, Alric Van Die Welt had disappeared, leaving John's partner trapped in a time loop that they had yet to decrypt.  She had been there for eight months.  He had never particularly liked his partner all that much to begin with.  She had resented being stuck with a rookie and had taken it out on him,   but he had certainly not wanted her to get stuck in the special brand of hell that was otherwise known as a time loop.  It was every Time Detective's worst fear, and they always did their best to prevent it.  Alrice Van Die Welt had proven too smart for them once again.

    He had been demoted after that had happened.  He was still a detective.  That hadn't changed, but he had been relegated to policing minor temporal disturbances.  They were the kind mostly perpetuated by hoodlums with nothing but time on their hands.  It was depressing.  He knew that he wasn't going to be advancing in the force any time in the near future and not unless some drastic good fortune fell upon him as well.  It was pretty much hopeless.  He was the laughing stock of his peers, stuck in a basement office, monitoring blips on the time map and drinking coffee to stay awake and plow through his boredom.  He'd also been stuck with a partner who he wished would go away.

    John would rather have been the resented rookie than be stuck with Bertram Powers.  He was, by all accounts, a geek.  He was good at the technical aspect of things, but his field work left a lot to be desired.  That was what left him partnered up with John.  Nobody wanted to risk being partners with either of them.  Their deficiencies outweighed any benefits to having them upstairs with the big dogs.

    Bertram was seated by the computer that day, as he usually was.  John, meanwhile was on the telephone to a superior officer catching hell for overlooking a spate of temporal infarctions over Southern California in 2008.

    "Bert decided that they were minors," John explained patiently and slowly to the chief.  "Probably accidental slippage."  Slippage was when someone stumbled into a naturally occurring temporal anomaly into another time.  They were usually minors: time differences of only a few seconds, of which the offender had no conscious realization that they had even traveled through time.  Occasionally the time slip was major, gaps of several hundred, or several thousands of years, but there was nothing they could do about the majors but monitor them.

    "Look at this."  Bert waved John over and John quickly ended the phone call on the pretense of an incoming infarction.  He looked over Bert's shoulder, surprised that there actually seemed to be something.

    The beginning swirls of a major temporal storm were brewing over Southern California...2008.

    "You've got to be fucking kidding me!"  John ran his hands through his hair in frustration.  "There actually was something to those minors?  They usually don't mean anything."

    "They don't mean anything," Bertram replied rather impatiently from behind his large black glasses.  He turned to look skeptically at John.  "Don't they teach you anything..."

    "Listen, Bert, I know everybody thinks we're the bottom of the barrel here on the force, but this simply can't be coincidence, alright?  The slips have been happening in 2008, right around the same spot and now this...this cloud?"

    "Temporal cloud," Bertram corrected him.  "Yeah.  It happens.  It's probably just a culmination of slips building up.  It'll crack soon, one or two people may fall through.  We can send out a team."

    John thought for a moment.  Sewing up a hole in time was easy enough with the right equipment.  He'd been trained for it.  Bertram had been trained for it.  It would be easy enough to go to 2008 and clean it up themselves without alerting the higher ups.

    "We can go," he said softly to Bertram.

    "John..." Bertram glanced sharply up at him.  "They have teams that do this.  We're just here to monitor..."
    
    "Screw that," John snapped.  "Don't you miss field work?  Don't you miss being out there on the front lines, in time?!"

    "Of course I do,"  Bertram grumbled.  "But that doesn't change the fact that this is not our job.  If we go there wouldn't we be just as bad as the people who do that sort of thing illegally?"

    "But we're the cops," John replied.  "It is our job.  What if it's an emergency?"

    "Then we alert the proper..."

    "Grow a spine, Bert," John interrupted him.  "We can do this!"

    Bertram tried to protest again but again John cut him off and pointed towards the screen instead.

    "Maybe this whole argument is moot, Bert."  He sat down in a chair beside his partner and pointed at the screen.  "Have  you decrypted the signature?"

    "Seems natural."  Bertram shrugged.

    "Seems natural isn't good enough,"  John pointed out.  "I just got my ass chewed out for not double checking minors and now we've got a temporal storm brewing.  People there, in 2008...they could fall through.  Might never get back...could be important people.  Do you really want the world to change?"

    "If the world changes," Bertram pointed out, "Then maybe I wouldn't be stuck in a basement with you."

    "I know.  I'm with you on that one." John managed a laugh.  "But we took an oath.  Just  humor me, okay?"

    Bertram shrugged and turned towards his computer.  He tapped out a few numbers on the keyboard and brought up the signature of the disturbance.  He transferred it to the large holographic touch screen in the middle of the room and walked over to it.  He regarded the mid-air display and thrust his hands here and there, changing it around, rearranging the data and hoping to find the answers that John was looking for.

    He finally pointed to cloud of numbers with a sigh.  "Naturally occurring, John.  Can we send out a team now?"

    "Check again,"  John said.  He walked up to the numbers and stared into the cloud.

    "Now wait a minute," Bertram scowled at him.  "I told you..."

    "You've been spending too much time down here, Bert," John replied and waved him away with a swat of his hand.  "I've seen this before.  You've seen this before."

    "What?"

    "It's a diversion,"  John said.  "It's a diversion code.  We studied this kind of thing in school.  Have you forgotten?"

    "I haven't forgotten.  I just think you're trying too hard to inject some excitement into..."  Bertram stopped cold suddenly and stared at the cloud of numbers.

    "I can't believe I didn't see it," he growled at John.  "I'm supposed to be the technological wizard!"

    "It's old," John replied.  "But it works.  It works well," he said.  "Before I went to the academy I wrote my thesis on it.  Created by Stuben McSvens.  It's a brilliant code.  Masks what's really going on as a naturally occurring temporal anomaly.  Check the signature again."

    "Yeah," Bertram agreed as he walked up to the display in order to move things around again.  "It's so easy now that I see it," he began mumbling to himself.

    "It just takes an idiot to see it," John replied.  He had long ago lost any confidence he had as an investigator.

    "You're not an idiot," Bertram looked away from his task to reassure his partner.  "We may have fucked up our share of times, but you're not an idiot and neither am I."

    He turned his attention back to the holograph, punched a few numbers and regarded the results.

    "There it is."  He pointed to a different string of numbers that had emerged from the first.  "It's there.  I don't know what made it.  I haven't ever seen anything quite like it, but it's definitely manufactured.  Possibly an alien race."

    "Wow," John said.

    "Yeah," Bertram stood back and admired his own handiwork.  "We're going to have to call this in, you know."

    "We will," John replied.  He then disappeared for a few moment and returned with his and Bertram's coats in on hand and their Time Travel Devices in the other.  "Let's go."

    "Go?  I thought we were going to call..."

    "C'mon," he grabbed Bertram's arm and depressed a button on one of the devices.

    They rematerialized at the entrance to Knott's Berry Farm in 2008.  Ominous storm clouds swirled above them chilling the air.

    "We can call them, after we see what's going on," John replied.   He handed Bertram his coat and grinned impishly at his partner.

    "You won't quit until you get us fired will you?" Bertram huffed as he pulled on the garment to fend off the impending winds of time.

*****


    "All the pieces are in place," he said.   He grinned up at the monitor's holographic display from where he lay in bed, his head in his partner's lap.  "It's going to work."

    "I told you it would, Phillip."  His name was Gerald, and he gazed fondly down at his partner.  His hand that had been resting upon the other's chest  slowly reached up to stroke his jaw.

    "The perfect crime," he said.

    "Yes," Phillip replied.

    "Because we can," said Gerald.

    Gerald leaned down and kissed him.  He pulled away a fraction of an inch, an insidious smile taking over his face.  Phillip felt a chill creep up his own spine.  Gerald was his lover, but the fact still remained that even  Phillip was afraid of him.

    "Because it's fun," Gerald said quietly, and Phillip shuddered in  his arms.

*****


    Mary held the list in her hand.  It was a list of people.  People who were coming to her restaurant.  She had no idea of what the blue eyed man wanted with them or how he had known that they were going to be there.  There were no reservations for brunch.  It was first come first serve as it was every week.  The list was suspicious, but she felt compelled to do it.  Any suspicious thoughts she may have had about the matter were washed away by the calm blue ocean of those eyes.  She had posted herself at the hostesses podium in order to take names as people walked in: that way she could keep track of the group she was supposed to be corralling.

    Oscar sat patiently with his wife Rosa and their children in the lobby awaiting a table to be seated at.  David sat calmly beside him talking about getting a full-time job in landscaping.  Oscar knew where that was heading.  He also knew that David had the best of intentions.  He was a good boy and he only wanted to help out with the family financially.  Oscar wouldn't hear of it though.  A full time job in landscaping would lead to nothing more than a permanent job in landscaping.  David would drop out of school, perhaps he would get some girl pregnant, and they would all end up living in the same house.  It was the cycle.  It was how things went, and it was the last thing that Oscar wanted for his son.  David was the smart one.  He had all but given up on Mimi.  Jose didn't seem to be heading down a much better path.  He was a wild child and was running around the lobby screaming his head off as it were.  He almost ran into a tall, masculine lady, who loudly and imperiously yelled at the top of her lungs to nobody in particular that they should keep track of their children.  Rosa scooted from her seat and pulled Jose back to the family where he squirmed and squealed until she gave him a piece of candy and his game boy to keep him quiet. 

    The loud woman sat down and was followed by a cadre of loud people who looked just like her.  They created quite a scene there in the lobby, the volume of the room rising as soon as they'd sat down and opened their mouths.  The only quiet one was a sad bald man who said nothing and stood in the corner, for they had not left him a place to sit down.
    
    "When are we going to be seated," one of them directed the question out to everybody within earshot.  It was a rhetorical question, but Oscar had a bad feeling about it.

    The young girl who happened to be sitting next to him inadvisably spoke up.  "Did you put your name in?" She offered helpfully.

    "Well, there are plenty of seats in there, why can't we just sit down," he replied snidely.

    "There's a queue," she replied.

    "A what?"  He stared at her incredulously.

    "Uh," she stammered.  "It's a, um...line.  There's a line.  You have to put your name in."

    "Well, what's that?"  He gestured towards a bank of un-manned cash registers.   "Who are we supposed to give our name to?  There's nobody there."

    The girl shrunk in her chair.  She was used to her parents yelling, but complete strangers yelling at her for no apparent reason was frightening.

    "Hey."  David stood up from his spot and stepped away from his father.  His career in landscaping was temporarily forgotten.  He wasn't one to stand by and let someone badger a poor girl who was only trying to be helpful.

    "The line forms out front."

    The man who had started the shouting, as it turned out, had his own flock of people to defend him.  The Mother Thing swooped down from where she had begun to start harping on the quiet man and descended upon David.

    "I will have you know," she said.  "That there wasn't anybody out there either!"

    "Right," David huffed.  "Was the big sign that says 'please wait here' not out there either?"

    The Mother Thing snapped her mouth shut for a moment then replied in the negative.

    "Sorry, then," David said.  If anything, he knew when to back down from a challenge from a woman who was big enough to kick his ass.  He held a hand out to Catherine.

    She stared at it for a moment, then stared up at David.  Her mother and step-father would never approve of her accepting help from a Mexican.  Especially a stranger.  Especially a cute stranger.  She timidly accepted his hand, and he swept her away to where his family was sitting.  He pointed to the seat he had vacated, and she sat down while he remained standing.

    "Sorry about that," David said.  "You looked like you could use a little help."

    "Thank you," she said.  She couldn't bring herself to look up into his brown eyes without becoming embarrassed and flustered, so she looked down at the purse in her lap instead.

    "I'm David."  He smiled warmly at her.

    "I'm Catherine," she mumbled at her purse.

    "And I'm Oscar," the father spoke up from his spot.  He arched an eyebrow at David.  David shook his head and scowled.  His father was never going to understand.

    "Are your parents here?"  Oscar turned his attentions back to the girl.

    "They just went to the bathroom," she said.  "They'll be back."  She sighed and finally looked up.  David had resumed smiling at her and so had Oscar.  It put her at ease and she smiled too, and she wished her parents would stay in the bathroom and never come back out.

*****


    Jason felt bad for Jody.  He actually felt bad for her, and that was a surprise to him.  Her cheery exterior was being slowly and surely chipped away at by a loud woman with black hair who wanted everybody to be aware of her dissatisfaction.  She was too cold at her table and had taken it upon herself to find a new table and seat herself and her loud family there as well.  Jody had okayed the move with her most pleasant smile and went bouncing around her business until Mary had stumbled in with another large family.

    "What's going on?"  Ned spoke up in a muffled Southern California slur from beside him.

    Jason turned to speak and almost got a face full of furry white hair.  It had been Ned's turn to wear the snoopy costume, much to the stoner's chagrin.

    "I can't see a fuckin' thing in here," he complained.  "And it's hot as fuck.  I can hear yelling though."

    "Customer's yelling at Jody," Jason confirmed.  "She's ahhh...I think she's going to cry."

    "Poor girl," Ned said then laughed.  "Are you going to console her after work?"

    "Stop it, Ned," Jason chastised his friend.  "I don't want to sleep with Jody."

    "Yeah, right.  I can see through you, Jase."  Ned in his giant headed Snoopy costume continued to laugh his ass off.
 
*****


    "We cleared that table for this family," Mary said to Jody, who stood, mortified, between her boss and Esther Baum.  "We have to seat them there."

    "Well, I guess we don't have a place to sit," Esther declared loudly and belligerently.  She had all the diner's attentions, and that was just the way she liked it.  "I don't believe it!" She huffed.  "It's been nothing but trouble all day long.  Nothing but trouble.  The service here is awful!"

    "I'm sorry, Ma'am,"  Mary spoke up brightly.  She normally would have been cowed into submission, but her meeting with the blue eyed man had put her in another excessively good mood.

   
"Was there something wrong with the table you were sitting at?"

    "It's too cold!"  Esther grumbled.

    Mary looked from Esther, standing next to the table she had chosen, and then to the table that had just been vacated...two feet to the right.  Then she looked at Jerry.  He shrugged apologetically but didn't make any move to oppose his wife.  He knew it wouldn't be any use and he hoped the restaurant staff would realize it too.  They didn't.

    The Mother Thing relented, but not because she had given up.  She sat back down with the rest of the family at the table that she had deemed too cold, and they all set their minds to complaining as loudly as possible about everything and making the dining experience as miserable as it could possibly be for everybody involved.  Even the innocent bystanders eating their brunches in peace at the neighboring tables were not spared.  There was nothing that pleased Esther more than making the rest of the world as miserable as she was.

    Jody approached Jason and Ned, clearly upset.  Her entire cheery facade had been stripped away by one determinedly angry customer.

    "Are you okay, man?" Said Snoopy Ned.

    She punched him in the giant Snoopy nose, and he toppled over backwards, landing on his back, squirming around, unable to gain the leverage to stand with his giant Snoopy head.

    "Oh, My God!"  Jody's hands automatically covered her mouth which hung opened with shock at her own actions.  "I'm so sorry Ned!"  She tried to help him up, but couldn't lift him with her small frame.  Jason grabbed Ned's other hand and helped him to regain his footing.

    "I'm sorry," she repeated.  Her voice wavered on the edge of sobbing, and tears glimmered in her eyes, threatening to spill over at a moment's notice.

    "C'mon." Jason draped an arm around her with a sigh.  He didn't want to be the one to comfort her, but he was the one she had chosen all the same, or so it seemed.  Ned grabbed onto the back of Jason's shiny green vest, and he turned to regard the Snoopy.

    "What are you doing, Ned?" he said.

    "I can't see for shit," Ned replied.  "That's why you have to lead me around.  Don't leave me out here in the middle of everything.  I'm going to trample all over some poor kid, man.  At least let me get this stupid costume off, and I'll leave you two love birds alone."    

    "Shhh!"  Jason hissed and glanced at Jody who was too upset to have noticed them.  "Don't say that kind of thing in front of Jody.  Let's just..."  He glanced up and down at the ridiculous costume.  "Yeah, let's get you out of that thing."

    All three of them retired to the furthest room from the dining area.

    Jody had started to cry before they got there, and Jason sat with her next to a window and let her.

    "I don't know why people are so mean," she sobbed when she was able to attempt coherency.  Jason rubbed calming circles in her back, and Ned stood, not far away, listening in...his Snoopy head under one arm and his shaggy hair poking out of the top of the costume.

    "Yeah, some dude wanted to take a picture of my butt," he chimed in.

    Jason looked up at Ned, and although he tried to be annoyed with his friend, he couldn't help but laugh at him.

    "He thought the tail was cute."

    "Yeah," Ned replied.  "It was attached to my BUTT."

    This brought a giggle out of Jody, and she dried her eyes with a napkin that Jason had found in the storage closet.

    "Thanks you guys," she sniffed.  "You two are the nicest guys that work here.  I'm glad  you're my friends."

    Jason stopped rubbing her back and stared at her, and Ned stared at him.  He suddenly felt like the biggest asshole in the entire world.

    "What?"  She stared from Ned back to Jason sensing that she had suddenly said something wrong.

    "Nothing, uh...yeah. Nothing," Jason replied uncomfortably.  "Yeah.  I'm glad you're my friend too."  He laughed nervously and then, as Jody was looking away he glared a warning at Ned not to say anything about the dislike he had for Jody.  He was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he had been wrong and that her sunny attitude had never been an act at all.

    "What's going on outside," Ned spoke up.  He was peering at a point somewhere beyond Jason's shoulder.

    Jason took his attention away from Jody for a moment and took a look for himself.  The sky was dark, and the ominous clouds swirled overhead.

    "Holy shit," Jason spoke, and Jody turned her own red-rimmed eyes towards the spectacle.

    "What's going on?"  She asked.

    "I don't know," Jason said.  He had never seen anything like it in all his life.  It wasn't as if Southern California was prone to rolling thunderstorms or tornado weather.  Thunderstorms hardly ever threatened, at least not the kind with billowing black thunderheads ensconced in an incandescent purple and green glow.

    "What the fuck?" Jody said as she peered out the window towards the impending storm.

    And suddenly Jason and Ned found something far more interesting than what was going on outside.

    "Did you just say 'fuck'?"  Ned asked.

    "What of it?"  Jody snapped and glared at him.

    "Damn,"  Ned held up his snoopy hands.  "I'm impressed."


*****


    It was ten o'clock.  Mary consulted her watch.  Time to gather up the people on the list.  She headed directly to each table, making up the excuse that each person had won a prize...a special meeting with snoopy.  The lie dripped out of Mary's mouth as if it had always lived there, and she hadn't even remembered thinking it up.  Catherine was first, then David, and they followed without much trouble although they were mightily perplexed as to how they had won a contest they hadn't entered.  They couldn't figure out what was so great about a meeting with a guy in a costume either.  Jerry was a bit more difficult to wrangle.  His wife kicked up a fuss, yelling across the entire dining hall that she was the one who should have won the prize since she was the one that had submitted their name to the queue.  Jerry only succeeded in extracting both himself and Mary from the situation by promising to sort things out with upper management.  He would be back and then she could take her rightful place as winner of the contest.

    Mary nervously ushered them towards the back of the building and into the room: the room furthest away from the dining hall.  She placed the device that the blue eyed man had given her next to the door handle.  She hadn't thought it would stay, yet there it was, firmly affixed to the wooden door.  She tried the handle and it didn't even move.  There was only one thing left to do.  And that was to wait.

    "This is the day!"  Phillip giggled excitedly.

    Gerald stood behind him, holding Phillip in his arms on the balcony of a high rise apartment as they both gazed out onto the quadruple sunset-rise of their planet.  They were bathed in the perpetual golden glow of their suns.
    
    "This is the day," Gerald agreed as he leaned forward and nipped his lover's ear.  "Let's go inside and check."

    "Alright," Phillip turned around and bounced into the building, his blue eyes alight with excitement.

    Gerald smiled to himself as he watched the boy go.  He was a gorgeous specimen, that was for sure.  But if not for the help of the device that masked his true self...well, except for his degree in temporal mathematics, Phillip was as average as any other rent boy he might have taken up with.  He was meant to be expendable, and he was going to be expended.  Gerald chuckled, pleased with himself and his conquest.  He followed Phillip into the room.  They approached the computer terminal and Gerald sent the picture to the holographic display in the corner of the room then regarded it.  Everything seemed to be in order.  The captives were locked in the room...just as planned.  Just as planned, Mary stood guard outside the door.

    "It was too easy," Phillip laughed.

    Gerald smiled at him and stroked his blond hair.  "Good boy," he said.  Then turned his attention towards the display.  A red alert flashed in the corner.

    "What's that?" Gerald muttered and zoomed in with the one mobile remote-controlled camera he had placed outside the building.

    "Nothing," Phillip said.  "Probably just a minor slip.  We've been sending them out, it's bound to disrupt the natural order of things right?  Bound to cause a bit of natural slip..."

    "Shut-Up,"  Gerald snapped at him and zoomed in on a duo of snappily dressed men who had only just appeared.

    "What?"  Phillip whined.  "Can't we get on with it?  I want to see if it's going to work."

    "What did you use to encrypt our time passages?" Gerald asked with strained politeness that barely contained his range.

    "What do you mean?"

    "What algorithm did you use," Gerald said.  "It was the Galactian cipher, right?"

    "Uh..." Phillip stared down at his feet.  He hadn't thought he'd done anything wrong by substituting the algorithm, but it was apparent that Gerald didn't think so.

    "The Galactian Cipher, Phillip," he repeated...a vein in his neck started throbbing angrily.

    "No," Phillip admitted.  "It was the McSvens Algorithm.  It's easy, it's concise, it gets the job done.  The Galactian Cipher would have taken hours to complete for each time we jumped.  It just wasn't..."

    "Those were your instructions!!" Gerald roared.  "Can't you follow a simple set of instructions you stupid little whore."

    "Hey!" Phillip shrunk under the weight of Gerald's storming rage.  He didn't especially like being called a whore, but he didn't want to say anything to further infuriate the other man.

    "Come here," Gerald said...seemingly calmer than he had been only moments before, but Phillip was afraid.  There was a cold hard expression in his eyes.  Phillip approached timidly and Gerald wrapped him tightly in his arms.

    "Look at this," Gerald pointed towards the screen at the two figures.

    "So?  Two guys." Phillip tried to shrug away his worry, but the vice grip that Gerald had on him wouldn't allow him to do so.

    "So?  Those are Time Detectives, Phillip,"  Gerald giggled unnervingly in his ear.  "Any idea how they traced us?"

    "McSven's Algorithm," Phillip replied glumly as he turned his face from the screen and stared at the floor.

    "Yes, McSven's Algorithm," Gerald confirmed.  "It's easy, it's simple, it's effective...and they teach an introductory course on it at the Academy.  I do things for a reason, Phillip.  Do I have to remind you that I'm the brains of this operation?"

    "Yes, sir," Phillip replied.  "I'm sorry.  It won't happen again."

    "That's right, it won't,"  Gerald replied.  He spun Phillip around to face him and then pulled him tightly into an embrace, kissing him hard on the lips then pushing him away.  Phillip stumbled and lost his balance for a moment before regaining his composure.

    "What was that for?"  He breathlessly asked Gerald who had stepped a few feet away.

    "This."  Gerald held up the Masking device that Phillip kept in his pocket at all times.

    "but..." Phillip searched his pockets frantically.  He felt the weight of a device still firmly entrenched where he had left the mask, yet there it was in Gerald's hand as plain as the quadruple suns.  As it turned out there was a device in Phillip's pocket.  He pulled it out and stared dumbly at it for a long moment.  It was a Time Travel Device.

    Gerald laughed manically.  While Phillip had been fishing around in his pockets, his partner, his creator, Gerald, had thrown the masking device on the bed and pulled a remote control from his pocket.

    "I gave you one task, Phillip."  He shook his head and sadly tutted to himself.  "This is going to be a shame.  You were really good in bed."   He depressed the button on the remote.

    And then Phillip was gone.

    It was almost as if he was never there.


*****


    Detective Arker pulled a pair of shades out from his jacket pocket and donned them.  Detective Powers eyed him curiously.

    "What are you doing, John?"  He finally said after he had gotten enough amusement out of Johns attempts at posing, only to be passed over without a glance by the many tourists milling about.

    "There isn't a hint of sunshine," Bertram said.  "Take the shades off."

    John shook his head adamantly.  "Temporal glasses," he said.  "Do you want your eyeballs to get temporally displaced?"

    "Seeing the future might be nice." Bertram grinned slyly at him.  Psychic ability was a side effect of staring for too long at a certain type of temporal storm.  The people of Earth in 2008 hadn't yet discovered that it was, in fact, a real possibility to see the future.  It was an easy thing to do when one's eyeballs and by extension one's neural pathways had become permanently linked to a tear in the fabric of time.  Of course there was always the opposite effect.

    "Yeah, but you could get stuck seeing the past over and over," John replied.  "Do you really want that?"

    Bertram chuckled to himself at John's showiness.  What John lacked in confidence he made up in false bravado.  Bertram was used to it.

    "Look."  Detective Powers removed a small computer from his back pocket.  He activated a time field and they disappeared from view of the passers by.  This allowed him ample room to flick on the holographic display without attracting a crowd.  He moved through various displays full of numbers before finally settling on one screen.

    "Not that kind of storm," Bertram said and nudged his partner with his elbow.

    An alarm sounded from the computer, and Bertram pulled up yet another screen.  Not a few yards away a minor time slip had occurred.

    "Well, they're not even trying now."  John clicked through to the signature.  "This is blatant use of a unauthorized TTD.  What the fuck is going on?"

    "I think we should call for back up," Bertram decided as he looked nervously up at the impending storm.

    "You see those clouds, John.  This isn't good.  Someone is playing at something here, and innocent people are going to pay the price if we don't get someone else in here right now!"

    "But you see that!"  John pointed at the display where a homing signal flickered on and off.  "The guy is right there!  We can apprehend him and put an end to this ourselves.  We can get out of the basement, Bert.  Don't you want that?  Don't you want to show those fools upstairs what we're made of?"

    "Of course I do," Bertram snapped.  "But this...Jumping with an unauthorized TTD?  Only stupid kids and idiots do that.  These guys have been smart enough to use a cipher to hide their tracks.  They've got enough technology to conjure up one hell of a storm!  This can't be coincidence.  It's got to be a trap."

    "They think they're smart," John replied.  "Confidence breeds carelessness.  This could be our lucky break.  We've got to take the chance."

    Bertram wanted to call for backup.  He knew it was the best option.  He knew they wouldn't be looked down upon because of it.  The fact remained that they were the bottom of the barrel, and they would probably never get recognition for it either.  John's field skills and Bertram's technologically inclined brain were going to be doomed to spend the rest of their lives in a basement monitoring naturally occurring minor slippage.  He sighed and held his hand out towards the area where the homing beacon was directing them.

    "After you, Detective." Bertram grinned.

    "I knew you would see the light," John said an returned the grin.  "You'll see, Bert.  We're going to be heroes!"







*****

*****



    "Right, so..."  David eyed the newcomer.  They had been trapped in the small room for longer than an hour.  The prospect of meeting Snoopy had somehow sounded so enticing coming from the manager, Mary's, lips.  Snoopy left a lot to be desired, however.  He was only a blond kid in an over-sized costume.  He hadn't even been wearing the head.  His scrawny neck stuck out from the giant neck hole, and his unkempt blond hair hung stingily down to his shoulders.  His eyes were bloodshot.

    Snoopy hadn't been the strangest thing to happen.  It only took Jerry five minutes of disappointment, followed by consternation, then bewilderment, to determine that the door had been locked, and anybody who tried to open one of the windows was greeted with a sharp electric shock.  He'd gotten angry then and had attempted to throw a chair through one of them.  The chair only bounced off an invisible force field and tumbled away into a corner.  Jody and Catherine had found each other and had found their own corner to sit in and cling on to each other.  They were strangers, but they were the only girls there, and they took comfort in each other as the boys ranted and raved and banged furtively on  the walls.

    And then he was there, as if he had always been there.

    He was a skinny kid, somewhere between David and Jason's age.  His hair was dark, almost black, and he was wide eyed, bewildered, and shocked.  He pulled a small, black, square device from his pocket and thumbed desperately at the buttons.

    "We haven't got any service," David finally informed him.  He couldn't stand watching the boy pressing buttons and becoming increasingly more distressed.

    He looked up at David and blinked.  His icy blue eyes were startling against his brunette hair.  They were the only thing about his previous appearance that had been the truth.  He heaved a despairing sigh and pocketed the device that David had assumed was a cellular phone.

   "You're right," he muttered.  He sighed again and looked around.

    "You can stop banging on the walls," he said loudly.  "We're never going to get out."

    Jerry, Jason, and Ned turned from their appointed wall banging tasks and faced the new comer.  They were curious only for a moment before they resumed what they were doing.

    He couldn't take it then.  The boy sank to the ground with a shudder and shielded his eyes in hopes that it would stem the oncoming tide of tears that threatened to burst forth.

    "Are you okay?" David asked from his standing vantage point.

    "He said he loved me," Phillip cried.  "I only made one mistake."

    David looked uncomfortably towards the girls.  He thought they might do a better job of consoling the stranger, but they were lost in their own little world of despair

    "This was supposed to be fun!"  Phillip wailed and made desperate flailing gestures about the room from his spot on the floor.

    David crouched down.

    "We all thought snoopy was supposed to be fun," David replied.  He scratched his head and pondered that.  They were all far too old for cartoon characters.  It was truly inexplicable to him.

    "That was only a mask," Phillip sniffed.  "I slipped one into Mary's pocket.  Everything the woman says from now on is going to seem like the best idea ever."

    "What are you talking about?" David asked.  He was the only person paying attention to Phillip.  At least he was trying to.  As far as he could tell the man was making no sense at all.

    "Nevermind." Phillip sniffed once and stood up.  He was nattily dressed in black trousers and a perfectly pressed shirt adorned with a waistcoat.   He smoothed down the front of his shirt and made his way towards an overturned chair.  He righted the furniture and calmly sat down upon it.  He gestured towards another chair, and David joined him.

    "Shouldn't we help..."

    "There's nothing we can do," Phillip replied sadly.  "It's the perfect crime.  All we have left to do is wait."


*****


    Mary eyed the two men marching up to her.  She wondered what they wanted and if they would try to get in the way of her plans.  She wasn't going to let that happen.  They stopped a few yards away from her.  She tried her very best to look innocent by shuffling her feet and staring at the floor, occasionally glancing at her watch.

    "Is it her?"  John asked his partner.

    Bertram shook his head in the negative as he gazed attentively at his hand-held.  "She's 21st century human alright, but she's carrying around a mask."

    "A mask?"  The surprise in John's voice was apparent.  "Shit. Can you disable it?"

    "No," Bertram replied.  "That kind of technology is far too advanced for this computer.  Can we call for backup now?"

    "C'mon," John scoffed at him.  "A little mask never hurt anybody.  It'll be far less effective now that we know she's wearing one."

    "This is a stupid idea," Bertram grumbled.  He was hoping that his partner would hang back and give him yet another chance to do a little convincing.  It was a bad idea.  They both knew it, but the lure for redemption was proving far too great for both of them.  John plowed on ahead, and Bertram followed in suit.

    They arrived in front of Mary, who smiled pleasantly at them and asked if she could help them.

    Their hardened detective exteriors melted the instant they came within range of the mask.  They both grinned dreamily at her and flashed their badges in an effort to impress her.  The mousy brown haired girl suddenly looked like the most gorgeous captivating thing either of them had ever seen.  They knew it was only the mask, but there was nothing they could do to break out of the spell.  She deactivated the door lock and led them inside.

    The rest of the captives turned to stare at her.  Emotions of rage, and confusion flickered across their faces, but Mary only smiled sweetly and told them that if they just sat tight the wait staff would be around to provide complimentary boysenberry mimosas for all.  That seemed to satiate them enough for the moment.

    "Now I'll just take those Time Travel Devices," she heard herself say even though she had no idea what it meant.  John Arker and Bertram Powers handed them over without a word of protest.  She thanked them politely for their cooperation and exited the room.  The door clicked shut after her and the force field reactivated around them, and then The Time Detectives snapped out of their trance.

    "Fuck!"  Bertram crowed, then shoved his partner as hard as he could.  John let him take out his frustration.  He knew that this time he deserved it.

    "I told you to call in for backup!"  Bertram yelled.  "But no!  We have to be heroes.  Some heroes we turned out to be.  Now we're trapped too."

  John hung his head.  He knew he had been wrong.  Again.  Maybe he did deserve to be in the basement, and this time he had dragged Bertram down with him.  One partner...stuck in a time loop, and the other...well, who knew what was in store for them.

  
*****


     Above the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant, the storm clouds crackled to life.  The thunderheads crept lower and lower to the ground as the tourists stopped their busy bustling about to look at the impressive weather.  It wasn't raining.  Temporal storms never rained.  The clouds were plumped, full with time.  The time that was, the time that is, and the time that will be, all roiled around in one big temporal stew, ready to descend upon the poor, unsuspecting population.  The storms were generally wild and uncontainable, and rare.  There was only so much a time detective could do to protect the populations should one naturally occur.

    It wasn't a naturally occurring storm though.  It was man made, and it was controlled all the way down to the very last detail.  Gerald watched from his hidden camera in a galaxy far away, in a time line that had yet to be created.  He laughed at the chaos he was creating as he directed the cloud down over the back end of his target...The Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant and the room that housed his captive audience.  There had never been a temporal storm quite like it, and that pleased him.  He was doing something that had never been seen before just because he could, and he was going to get away with it.  Nobody would ever suspect the son of an ambassador to be involved in such dangerous and illegal activities.  But he was bored, and he needed something new to play with.

    There was a knock on his door.  He quickly deflated the holographic display, straightened his tie, and walked over to answer it.  His mother stood there, dressed in her finest.  They were expected at a charity ball, father, mother and son.  They would show up and look their best and play to the crowd and give their speeches.  Then they would go home, and the mother would get drunk, and the father would be ensconced in his diplomatic responsibilities for the rest of the night.  No one would even know about the storm until the things around them started to change.  It would be subtle at first, but as the days went by the changes would become more dramatic.  Nobody would ever know the difference though.  It would only seem as if that future was the one that was always meant to be.  Now that Phillip was gone only Gerald would know the truth.

    He had rewritten his very own Time line.


*****

  
    Detective John Arker stood on a table and commanded the attention of the captives, while Bertram stood at ground level with his arm crossed, a scowl adoring his face.  They had no way to contact help within the force field, and with their TTD's gone, rescue was impossible.  The storm was descending upon them and it was apparent that it was being controlled and being funneled in their direction for reasons unknown.  There would be no riding this out.  They were going to slip through time, and the people had to be prepared.

    "What you see out there is a temporal storm," Arker shouted over the whine of the swirling winds.  "We're about to slip through a tear in the fabric of time and...well, we don't know where we're going to come out.  This kind of thing is uncontrollable."

    Phillip sat next to David, who had provided a boysenberry mimosa.  They had found a cart full of champagne and a few jugs of juice hidden in a closet.  They'd kept the find to themselves and the champagne seemed to have calmed Phillip down drastically.  He was staring glassy eyed up at the time detective who was giving the speech, the back of his head resting lightly on David's shoulder.  David's discomfort at the situation had slowly but surely melted away.

    Phillip giggled drunkenly then turned his head to whisper in David's ear.

    "Here comes the part about the light and the sonic boom."

    "...and you'll see a flash of light," Detective Arker was saying from his makeshift platform.   "You won't feel anything.  You won't know anything.  It'll will be like you don't exist in that moment.  And you don't.  You'll have broken apart traveling through time and come back together on the other end.  It's a complicated business, lots of maths, isn't that right, Detective Powers?"

    "Yes, lots of maths."  Bertram nodded vigorously.  "It's not dangerous," he added when he noted the look of concern and dread on the faces of the captives.

    "No, it's not," Detective Arker confirmed.  "It does take a lot of energy to bring the particles back together, so you'll hear a loud noise when you rematerialize.  It's coming from inside of you, but don't worry.  It doesn't hurt.  It just takes some getting used to."

    "How did you know that?" David murmured in awe, but Phillip didn't answer.  He had fallen asleep.

    He did not wake up when the storm swallowed them  up, and he did not awaken for the sonic boom either.





*****


    It was quiet where they had landed.  The force field had dissipated and it was dark.

    "Have you got anything?"  John asked Bertram as they sat there contemplating their next move.  The rest of the captives sat huddled and frightened in the middle of the room, the detectives having forbade them to attempt going outside.  They had no idea when or where they were after all.

    "The computer's working," Bertram said.  "Thank heaven for small miracles."

    "Can you call out?"

    "Now's the time for back up, huh?"  Bertram looked smugly up at his partner from behind his glasses.  "Now that we're in deep shit up to our eyeballs."

    "Past our eyeballs," John confirmed with a sigh.  "I'll take the blame if we ever get back."

    "No, it's fine."  Bertram shrugged.  "I'd rather go down with you.  If I'm with you maybe I won't get stuck in a time loop for eight months..."

    "Look, that wasn't my fault," John grumbled.  "She let her guard down.  Alric Van Die Welt is clever.  You don't think he..."

    "No."  Bertram shook his head adamantly.  "This doesn't bear his signature.  This place isn't on the map."

    "What?" John stared incredulously at Bertram who was staring at his hand held computer.

    "Not on the map."  Bertram confirmed.

    "That's not possible," John replied.  "Everywhere is on the map.  We can't have gone beyond the map.  It goes out several trillion years in either direction...I..."

    "No," Bertram said.  "That's not what I mean.  This when is on the map.  This place is not."

    "Shit."  John slapped a hand over his eyes and groaned.  "That is not good."

    "Nope."  Bertram stood up himself and pocketed his computer.

    "This storm has overwritten a time line," John sighed.  "Crap.  A brand new..."

    "Yep," Bertram gave voice to a Time Detective's biggest fear.  "It's not a natural expansion.  It's a fissure.  Where we came from...that time line is eroding.  It will be replaced by this one eventually."

   John surveyed the frightened crowd. 

    "So these people are important?"

    "I would assume so," Bertram replied.  "I mean, they could attribute the building damage that taking this room left back on Earth...to, I don't know, an earthquake or something.  Taking a building isn't going to cause a fissure.  At worst it would create a few new expansions."

    Taking away important people, however was a different story altogether.  Get enough of them in a room together, and transport that room across time and space...

    "We are so getting fired," John said.

    Bertram knew very well that it was all John's fault for not calling in the back up, but he wasn't going to let the detective sit there fall into a depressed state of inaction.  They may very well be stuck in god knows where for the rest of eternity...a place which very well might not even have a sustainable atmosphere or anything edible.  They had both been to many places like that in their travels.  In any case, Bertram wasn't going to give up.  Not without a fight.

    "Come on."  He punched lightly at his partner's shoulder.  "We have protocol for situations like these."

    "Bert..."

    "Listen," Bertram leaned over and whispered at John.  "There was a time jump that led us here.  One of these people is not who they seem to be. Let's get going.  We've got some interviews to do."


*****


    David was the last person Bertram interviewed.  John had gone through his entire list of interviewees as well, and had not found one suspicious character.  He hadn't found that any of them were likely to be great world leaders, or anything else that might affect a change as big as a fissure, but he knew as well as anybody else the hidden potential that most human beings carried around within them.

    "Just think," Bertram sighed exasperatedly.  "Was there anybody who just sort of appeared?"

    David scowled.  The detective had asked him the same question a hundred times or so it seemed.  

    "No, I told you," David grumbled.  "We were all eating brunch with our families than the lady came and told us we won a special meeting with the man in the snoopy costume."  He pointed towards Ned...who was still snoopy-fied and curled up asleep in the corner of the room, using his giant Snoopy head as a pillow.

    "We all thought it was the greatest thing ever."

    "Yeah," Bertram said.  He rolled his wrist in an effort to cajole David into skipping over that part of the story.  He'd heard it all before.  "That was the mask."

    "That's what Phillip said."

    Bertram perked up at that.

    "What?"  he asked.

    "I said, that's what Phillip said." David eyed the detective suspiciously.  "What's going on?"

    "What else did Phillip say?" Bertram eagerly continued his line of questioning.

    "He...nothing.  Look, he's upset.  His boyfriend just broke up with him."

    Bertram scowled at the teenager.  He knew he was leaving something out.

     David collapsed under the weight of Bertram's angry expression.  If there was anything that his father had taught him it was to respect authority figures.

    "Look, he was trying to call him on his cell, but we had no service.  Then he tried to tell the guys that we couldn't get out of the room.  I mean.  We couldn't.  It's not like he knew something we didn't."

    "Keep going," Bertram prodded his witness.

    "He knew."  David looked down at his hands and muttered the words more to himself than to Bertram.  He didn't want to get Phillip in trouble, and more than that...he didn't want Phillip to have done something wrong.

    "Knew what?"

    "He knew about the sonic boom and the light."

    Bertram stood and lay a hand on David's shoulder.  "That'll be all.  Thank you."

    And with that dismissal David returned to sit next to his new friend on the other side of the room.

    "What did you tell them?"  Phillip sat on his chair facing forward.  He knew very well that David had told the detectives everything.  They would be there at any moment to interrogate him.

    "You knew about the sonic boom," David replied softly.  "You've time traveled before."

    "Yeah, so?"  Phillip said.  "Lots of people have."

    "Are you from the future?"

    "Don't ask me that." Phillip kept his blue eyes pointing straight ahead.

    "Did you do this?"

    "I said don't ask me that."


*****


    "Do you believe any of this," Jason asked Ned.  Jody and Catherine had both joined them and they were shaking their heads  negatively.  Ned however was nodding away.


    "I knew we could time travel," Ned spoke, then giggled.  "It's all a conspiracy, man.  To keep us from the gold."

    "What are you talking about?" Catherine asked.  She was somehow entranced by Ned's stream of conscious babbling.

    "The golden city, man.  It's out there in time!"  He accompanied his story with grand sweeping gestures of his arms.  Jason only rolled his eyes at his friend.

    "Is he always like this?"  Catherine asked.  She tried to sound amused, but her amusement only came out scared and confused.

    "Yeah, pretty much," Jody confirmed it.

    "He's still a little high," Jason admitted.  Ned ignored both of them and kept ranting about forbidden golden cities hidden away by the aliens through time


*****


    "Phillip," Bertram said his name, and it sounded like an order.  An order to follow the detective.  An order to confess.

    Phillip had nothing left to lose.  He was no longer the handsome blond young man that had so captivated Mary that very morning.  He was shown as he truly was, as scared boy longing for acceptance.  He thought he had found it with Gerald, and he'd let the older man mold him into whatever he wanted through the use of the masking device.  That was over, though.  It was time to face up to the truth.

    "What time are you from?" Bertram asked as he offered Phillip a seat.  John sized him up and squinted imperiously at him.

    "I'm from the 82nd century," he said.  "Planet 82393179274."

    "Right," John nodded to himself.  He let a smile creep over his face.  He had vacationed on that planet many times.  "The one with all the suns."

    "Yeah." Phillip shrugged.  It was beautiful to some.  To the natives it only made the planet very hot and uncomfortable.  At least that was how it had been for Phillip when he was living on the streets.  The sun glinting off the golden towers of the rich held no beauty for  him; not even when the men of repute cornered him in the alleyways at night and took him up in those towers to lay him down in their beds for no payment more than a place to sleep and a cup of coffee in the morning.  Such was the way of the Golden Utopia as the planet was commonly nicknamed for the rich perpetual sunset light that the quadruple suns provided every corner of the planet at all times.  As with most Utopias...it really wasn't.  Brochures could make everything seem so nice.

    "Can I go now then?" Phillip wondered as the detectives weren't saying anything.  They seemed to be lost in thought.

    "No," John spoke up.  "Let's have it."

    "Let's have what?"  Phillip wondered.

    "The Time Travel Device," Bertram supplied the answer to his query.  "Let's have it, kid.  You didn't just fall out of the sky.  Your atoms would be scattered across all corners of the universe if you didn't have one to unscramble you upon your arrival."

    Phillip sighed and handed over the TTD.

    "Nice," Bertram couldn't help but marvel as he held it in his hand.  "Have you ever seen one from the 82nd?"  He handed it over to John.

    "Once or twice," John replied.  "This isn't from the 82nd though."  He arched a skeptical eyebrow at Phillip.  "Are you going to tell us when you're really from?"

    "I swear," Phillip replied.  "I never even seen a real one of those things until Gerald showed me!  I'd only ever studied them in textbooks."

    "And who is Gerald," Bertram asked.

    "My friend," Phillip muttered.  "Or at least I thought he was.  This was his plan.  He thought he could get away with it, and I cocked things up.  That's why he dumped me here.  It doesn't work."

    Bertram pressed the Time Travel Device's on button and nothing happened.

    "He's smart," Phillip uttered miserably.  "He's really smart and he disabled it.  I don't know how to fix it.  I went to school to become a coder before...things.  Temporal mathematics was my concentration... I can cover up time tracks; I'm good at that. "

    "Yeah, right!"  Bertram opened his mouth before thinking and laughed at the boy.  "The McSven algorithm?  Come on, even John could see that one coming and he's the muscle of the operation here."

    "Excuse me," John cut in.  "But John is the ONLY one who saw that coming, by the way."

    "It would have taken us days to figure it out if you'd used something like..."

    "The Galactian Cipher," Phillip supplied.  "I fucking know, okay?"

    "ooo, that's a good one," Bertram conceded.  "That may have taken a couple of weeks to decode one jump if we'd even been able to see it at all until it was too late."

    "It is too late," Phillip muttered caustically.  He glared up at the older man with his blue eyes gleaming.  "Gerald got away with it.  Look at us.  Some of the most brilliant minds of the twenty first century...trapped in a fissured time line.  The world's going to change, detectives, and it's Gerald who changed it."

    Detective Arker continued on his crusade of silent eyebrow arching skepticism, prompting Phillip to let slip even more of his feelings.

    "He was brilliant," Phillip said sadly.  "I loved him."

    "And you see how  you've been repaid," John snapped.  Then he addressed Bertram.

    "At least we know we're among the best and the brightest..."

    "You weren't supposed to be here," Phillip pointed out.  "If I'd have used the right cipher..."

    "Hindsight," John replied.  "Enough of this lovey dovey talk.  This Gerald...what was his plan exactly anyway?  Cause a fissure, replace the time-line...to what end?"

    "He wanted to see if he could do it," Phillip replied with a shrug.  "He wanted to steal some of the greatest minds, break the time line, and then put it back before anybody noticed.  The perfect crime.  He's going to put us back.  I just know he is.  All we have to do is just sit here for a couple of days."

    "I don't think I believe that," John said then turned to his partner.  "Do you believe it?"

    "Not really," Bertram agreed.  "I mean, come on, man.  Do you really think he's going to put us back now that he's stuck two detectives with a witness...nay! an accomplice?"

    "I loved him," Phillip replied sadly.  It wasn't really an answer to the question, and it was barely an excuse.  He had been used for his skills at temporal mathematics.  It was what he had gone to school for before he fell on hard times and turned to a life on the streets, turning tricks for money. Gerald had seen something in him.  He had seen the potential and the intelligence.  Gerald had taken the masking device and made Phillip everything he wanted to be...tall, strong, blonde, titled.  Everyone in Gerald's circle knew him as Sir Phillip of Clim-Port, a wealthy and  bustling sea side town on the opposite side of the planet.  He had gone from a nobody to a somebody overnight, but having come to know that that he had been used...he was ashamed.  He felt more ashamed for falling so hard for a man such as Gerald than he ever had for being a rent boy.

    "Alright," Bertram sighed.  "We've all been in love, and none of us are going anywhere.  We'll keep your TTD if you don't mind."

    "Fine." Phillip shrugged.

    "I think it would be best if you all try to get some sleep.  There are some tablecloths in that closet with the champagne, right?"
    
    Phillip nodded.

    "Good," Bertram said.  "Why don't you and David hand them out.  We'll work on this some more tomorrow.  Maybe you know a way to get back..."

    "I don't," Phillip replied.  "The TTD is broken.  I don't see any other way.  I'm good at temporal mathematics...the mechanics of the machine, especially a future model..."

    "Get some rest kid."  Bertram smiled kindly and finally shooed the boy away.

    "What was that about?" John asked.  "You're being awfully nice to the bad guy."

    "Bad guy, hardly," Bertram scoffed.  "That kid isn't the brains."

    "Still an accomplice.  Still a criminal," John said.  "It doesn't lessen his crime because he was in love with some criminal mastermind."

    "Maybe," Bertram said.  "Still doesn't change the fact that we're all stuck here.  I really don't think he's a threat to anybody anymore."

    "We're still keeping watch," John said.

    "Of course," Bertram agreed.  "I wasn't going to argue that.  I mean, I wouldn't put it past one of these great minds of the twenty first century to go wandering out in the darkness of a hostile...possibly alien environment either."

   They had handed out the table cloths as blankets in smoldering silence.  Phillip lost a lover, gained a friend, and lost a friend in the span of one horrible evening.  He didn't know what to do.  There was only one table cloth left.  He offered it to David.

    "I'm sorry for all this," Phillip said.  "It was just a game."

    "A game to you," David replied.  "My family is back there.  They're probably worried sick about me.  You don't realize what you've done."

    "He'll put us back in a couple of days," Phillip replied.  If there was only one thing he could hold on to it was the hope that Gerald would stick to the plan to repair the fissure in the time line.

    "Nobody will even know you've gone missing if everything goes according to plan.  Time travel...it's math, it's science, it's exact.  You'll be put back the exact second following the one that you disappeared."

    "Right."  David scowled.  "Somehow I don't think everything's gone according to plan so far.  Am I right?"

    Phillip shrugged.

    "That's what I thought."  David said.  "God, is this what people do in the future?  Fuck with other people's lives?  Don't you have anything better to do?  Surely there's got to be some sort of entertainment that doesn't involve...what did those detective guys call it?  'Ripping open the fabric of time...'"

  He shoved the last table cloth back at Phillip and gave him one last glare filled with disgust and fury before he stomped away to another corner of the room.  Phillip sighed.  He sat down with his back to the nearest wall and pulled the fabric up to his chin.  He'd been smart once.  He'd had promise.  Those days were gone though.  He didn't feel anything more than useless.

 
*****


    Catherine looked out across the room.  She and Jody had struck up a friendship.  The other girl had maintained a friendly exterior despite the terror that was running through their veins.  They hadn't felt anything like the time traveling.  Non-existence was frightening, and despite everything the detective said, she had a feeling that it wasn't as safe a mode of transportation as they made out.    She wanted to feel safe again.  At least at home she could go to her room and study.  There was no such sanctuary there.  The detectives had taken up residence in the supply closet.  One slept while the other kept guard, a suspicious eye carefully trained on only one person in the room, Phillip.  Phillip, who, despite the surveillance, remained sleeping soundly.

    There was only one other person awake in the whole room.  The boy who had been nice to her earlier in the day.  She couldn't help smiling to herself as she remembered the warmth of his hand in hers.  He sat propped up against the wall, hugging his arms in an attempt to ward off the cold.  He had no blanket, she knew.  She had seen him arguing with Phillip earlier.  They had taken up with each other almost immediately, but Phillip had been upset, and David seemed like he was the kind of person to lend a hand to anybody in need.  Even in the heat of the argument, he had given away his tablecloth...the only hope for comfort any of them had to make it through the night.

    She left Jody, who slept nestled in between Ned and Jason and she walked over to David.

    "There aren't any table cloths left?"

    "No," David remarked glumly.  She stood above him and he refused to meet her gaze until she dropped her own table cloth at his feet.

    "We can share this one," she offered.  "I think it's big enough."

    He returned to staring at the floor and didn't reply positively.  He didn't say no either, so she sat down beside him and spread the makeshift blanket over both of them.

    "I never really got to thank you," she said.
    
    "Thank me for what?"  he asked.

    "For rescuing me from that awful woman."  She shook her head.  She thought her parents fight had been bad, then they'd gone off to the restroom.  She thought the black haired woman's ranting had been bad, but then David arrived.  She thought a brunch eaten in abject silence was bad, but she'd won a contest to meet Snoopy.  Then she had traveled in time and none of those things mattered any more.

    "You're welcome," he said.

    "Do you think we're ever going to get back home?" She wondered.

    "Phillip says we will," David muttered.

    "What?"

    "He's from the future.  This whole thing was no accident.  He helped plan it.  He said as much."

    "Oh." Catherine stared straight ahead trying to comprehend the news.  "But he looks so much like us..."

    "What do you expect a dude from the future to look like?" David asked.

    "Well, we don't look like people from the past," she replied.

    "Right, well, give some guy from the past a new haircut, shave off the mutton chops, and take him to Macy's, and I'm sure he's not going to look as old timey as he does in some ancient tintype."

    "True," she conceded.  "So, what's he like?  This Phillip?  I've never met anybody from the future, and you've been hanging out with him all day long."

    "I didn't know," David said.  "I had no idea until the detectives talked to me, and they knew."

    "Oh."

    "You sound disappointed," he turned and looked at her.  Her curiosity had been squashed by the revelation that someone from so distant a future was either very good at pretending or exactly the same as they were in the past.

    "It's just," she sighed.  "Future people!  Aren't they supposed to be flying around with jet packs and...and stuff...."

    David laughed fondly at her and felt compelled to place his arm around the girl.  She settled in to his warm embrace with another, more contented, sigh.

    "Well, you can replace jet packs with shiny time travel devices..."

    "Really?" She perked up.  "Can't we just use that to get home..."

    "The detectives have it," David replied.

    "We should get it from them," Catherine decided.


*****


    Jerry wondered why he was there.  He had been the first person to waken, and he looked around at all the others sleeping.  The rest of the people he'd been capture with...they were all in their late teens and early twenties.  He couldn't help but wonder what on earth a bunch of alien time travelers would want with a pudgy fifty year old man who was losing his hair.  Still, it was better than another evening alone with his wife.  This was strange, and this was foreign and scary, but at least it was an adventure.  He might die, but at least he could say that something interesting had happened in his life.  He stood up and stretched and looked out the window in hopes that he might be greeted by some incomprehensibly gorgeous alien environment.  He was only greeted by more darkness.

    He sighed sadly and turned back towards the interior of the room.  At least the lights still worked.  He had no idea how they could still have power having been "temporally displaced"  as the detective people had called it.

    One of the girls stirred and woke the boy she was sleeping next to.  They looked tired.  Everybody looked tired.  They had all been shifting uncomfortably in their sleep.  It wasn't the best way to get a good night's rest, on a cold hard floor without even a pillow.  The tablecloths did very little to ward off the cold, and he had nobody to warm himself against either.  The only other loner was the strange kid with the blue eyes.  The three kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant were huddled together...

    The Mexican and the quiet girl were conferring and pointing at the detective posted at the door.  It was the one with the glasses.  He had fallen asleep during his designated watch period.  He had been spending most of the time fiddling with a strange silver box.  A panel had been opened and the guts spilled out over his lap, connected to the inner circuitry by a mass of colored wires.  As Jerry watched, the girl crawled silently over the floor and grabbed the gadget from the detective's lap.  He woke with a start.  Jerry stood up uncertain of what action he should take.  He had no idea what was going on and was happy to defer to the detectives.

    Bertram shook the sleep out of his head and started at the sight of his empty lap.  He jumped up, uttering a long stream of curse words, then noticed Catherine, who was still crawling, trying to be inconspicuous and failing.  He stalked over to her and yanked her to her feet.

    "Hand it over," he said.  She glanced sheepishly up at him and dropped the device in his hand.  It was then that Jerry decided to join them.

    "What's going on?" he asked.  He glanced at the device for a short moment, and it registered in his mind that he'd never seen anything like it before.  It wasn't a cellular phone, and it didn't seem to be any kind of PDA.  It was only  a silver box with rows of unmarked buttons and no display.  The closest thing he could gather was that it was some kind of remote control.

    "What are you playing at, young lady?"  Bertram asked.  "This isn't a play thing.  You could have broken it."

    "If it's not broken why don't you take us home?"  She screamed in his face, and it came out halfway between anger and hopeless despair.

    David joined her then and crossed his own arms angrily.

    "You're messing with stuff you know nothing about," Bertram replied.

    "It's been disabled," a soft voice spoke up from the periphery of the group.  Phillip stood there looking smaller than he had the day before.  "Do either of you have any experience at all with temporal engineering?"

    It was Bertram's turn to look sheepish.

    "Yeah, like you do," David growled at him and turned away.

    Phillip looked hurt for a moment before pretending to ignore the snub by answering it truthfully.

    "I didn't really study the mechanical side of things, no.  My concentration was more on the theory and the mathematics of time travel."

    "He can't be serious,"  David said in an exasperated manner.

    "He's very serious," Bertram replied.  "This is a serious matter.  This is a real device."

    "Is that how you did it?" David narrowed his eyes at Phillip.

    "No, it's a personal portal: a Time Travel Device.  It only has enough power to transport two or three people.  Four is stretching it.  Five and you'll be leaving bits of people scattered throughout time.  An arm in 1972 a leg in 8049..."

    "He's right," Bertram confirmed.  "It can't get us home.  We got here through the storm.   But it can get one of us home."  He gestured at himself and then towards the closed closet door where John was still sleeping.  "And if we can do that, then we can get help and get you all back where you belong, safe and sound."

    "I think you should be explaining that to all of us," Jerry offered.  "I've been sitting here all night with no idea of what is going on, and you expect us to just follow you because you flash your fancy badges around?  If you are 'Time Detectives'  then how did you get in 2008?

    Bertram sighed.  "Mary took them," he mumbled as inaudibly as he could.

    "What's that?"  Jerry asked.

    "Mary took our TTDs, okay?" he said, his voice increasing in volume and frustration.  "The woman who led you all in here back on Earth?  She was wearing a mask.  She tricked us."
    
    "Right, so you're incompetent," Jerry said.  "And why should we listen to anything you have to say?"

    "Because," Phillip spoke up, his voice soft but clear.  "They're our best chance of getting out of this back to where we belong."

   
*****

    
    Jody woke up in a tangle of arms and legs.  She frowned to herself and she removed Ned's arm from her chest.  How she had ended up wedged between her two work mates she would never know.  It had been a very long day.  She struggled into a seated position and noticed something going on.  Catherine, who was a particularly easily frightened girl, was being shouted at by one of the detectives.  Being the only other girl there, Jody felt a sudden need to rush over to defend Catherine.  She stumbled into a conversation about Time Travel.

    Jody, having vacated her spot, had left the boys to wake up in each other's arms.  They were perplexed at this but shrugged it off and soon joined the others where Phillip was doing his best to explain the situation to the detective with the glasses.

    "As it is," Phillip said.  "I think you've lost us our best chance...Catherine is it?"

    Catherine glared daggers at him.  She asked him why in not such a polite manner.

    "Genius here..." Phillip nodded towards Bertram.  "...Was trying to fix it.  He's never seen one that was built after...when did you say?"

    "The 96th," Bertram muttered.  "I was getting it..."

    "No, you weren't," Phillip replied.  "Gerald showed that one to me.  It's absolutely amazing, and he said the further out in time you get the smaller, the more complex, the more dense the circuitry..."

    "There's hardly anything in here," Bertram replied.  "Compared to the ones I've seen from my future.  More complex my ass."

    "Right."  Phillip shook his head as if he were talking to a small child.  "I don't suppose you have a nano-scope?"

    "What?"

    "Do they not let you idiots police the future?"  Phillip snapped.

    "Not our department."  Bertram shrugged.  "But we took the course...Shit."

    "You are the stupidest cops I've ever met," Phillip replied.  "You can't see most of the circuitry because it's too small to be seen with the human eye.  You need a nano-scope to fix that TTD, and to top it off, dear Catherine here has probably dumped half the components out onto the carpet, and there is a zero percent chance we're going to find any of them."

  Catherine studied the floor of the room in great detail then as she could feel her companion's glares upon her.

    "I only wanted to get home," she said softly, and on the verge of tears.  David went to her and put his arm around her and led her away from the group.  He tossed a glare back at Phillip, who stood and glared back at him defiantly, despite the fact that meeting with David's disapproval, this stranger that he had only just met, made him ill inside.

   Jason heaved a heavy sigh and walked away as well, his little group followed him towards the window.

    "It's my mom's birthday today," Jody said as they peered out into the darkness.  "Are we ever going to get home?"

    "It doesn't look good," Ned replied.  The high from his usual pre-work joint had long since abandoned him and so had the Snoopy costume.  It just wasn't as amusing to go traipsing around in a the giant shell of a cartoon character when you were sober.  What was left was the real Ned, a skinny kid in three day old jeans who wanted nothing more out of life than a place to skateboard and a warm room to play X-box in.  Growing up and responsibility scared him to death.  He wanted to avoid it at all costs.

    "Don't worry, Jody," he sad and placed a sly hand on her shoulder.

    Jason eyed him and he grinned back with a wink, before turning his attention towards the point outside which the girl had fixed her gaze.

    "Did I do something wrong?" She settled in to Ned's arms and placed her head on his shoulder much to his and Jason's surprise.

    "Of course not, Jo," Jason replied.  "None of us did.  Maybe we'll...Maybe we'll all wake up and this is a dream and Patrick Duffy is in the shower..."

    Jody giggled.

    "You're funny, Jace," She said.  "How's the Grad School thing going?"

    Jason shrugged.  "Not that it matters now, but not good.  I'm not so great at having ideas.  I just want to paint.  What about you?"

    He realized in that moment that he really knew nothing about Jody.  He knew nothing about her life at all to lead him to dislike her.  He had only done so because she seemed happy.  She seemed satisfied with her life and pleasant enough to spread that happiness around.  She got the big tips because she worked hard to do that, and she deserved them.  He felt like a cad.

    "Me?  I don't go to school, Jason," she said.  "I thought you knew that?"

    Maybe he did.  He didn't remember in any case and only shrugged at her.

   "I have to take care of Mom," she said sadly.  "She's fading fast I'm afraid.  I don't know what I'm going to do when she's gone..."  She hugged her arms, straightening up and shrugging off Ned's embrace.  He frowned slightly, but gave her the space she had silently asked for.  She laughed then.

    "What I'm going to do when she's gone?"  She laughed.  "I'm the one who's gone.  What is she going to do without me?  She can barely walk.  She won't be able to feed herself...god."  She buried her face in her hands and cried.

    "It's okay, Jody," Jason said softly.  "We're gonna get out of this..."

    "Are you kidding?" she snapped.  "Didn't you hear that conversation those idiots were having?  They have no idea what to do, and that stupid bitch destroyed our only chance!"

    "I thought you liked Catherine?"  Ned asked.

    "Yeah, before she ruined all our lives," Jody said loudly enough for Catherine, who was situated not far away, nestled snugly in David's arms.  Catherine momentarily scowled at her former friend  then she buried her head in David's shoulder and
resumed sobbing.

    "C'mon, man," Ned said.  "She was just trying to help.  We'd have done the same thing if we knew what the hell was going on.  I mean, if that thing really does travel in time."  He stared out the window.  "Maybe somebody's playing a horrible practical joke on us."

    "It's still dark," Jason replied.  "I can't even see what's out there.  I don't know how someone could pull off this kind of practical joke, or why they would want to play it on a bunch of strangers."

    "It's a conspiracy," Ned mumbled.  "Maybe the government wants to experiment on us and...and they drugged us and took us to a secret underground bunker?"

    "You have an over active imagination, Ned," Jody giggled slightly at him."

    "Well, I won't believe it until we see where we are," Ned said.

    They were silent for a moment, staring out into the darkness.

    "What if we aren't anywhere?"  Jason finally said.

    "What do you mean?"  Jody looked up at him.

    "What if there's nothing out there," he said.  "What if it's just darkness.  All this talk about new time lines and all this bullshit.  Maybe the sun will never come up.  Maybe the sun is dead and this is all that's left."

    "Like we're in a black hole or something," Ned replied and nodded his head sagely.

    Jody pondered this for a moment, then sighed.  "We're going to have to find out sooner or later."

    "What do you mean?" Ned scratched his head and regarded her quizzically.

    "I'm hungry," she said, softly.  "I don't think the human body is built to live on boysenberry mimosa's alone.  We're going to have to go out and find food at least."

    "What if there is no food?" Ned replied nervously, his eyes darted around the room.

    "We eat the future man first," she decided.

    And Jason and Ned stared at her incredulously.

    "God, guys!"  She laughed at them and held her hands up in protest.  "I was joking!"


*****


    He was greeted by yet another diplomatic entity and he vaguely wondered when the changes were going to start kicking in.  He was tired of the ceremony, and he was tired of the politics, and most of all he was tired of the Royalty.  The kings and presidents and other various leaders of the Galactic Alliance milled around the building chatting about the public affairs of their home worlds.  The president of Earth was a pudgy balding man, who, despite the best intentions was always creating intergalactic missteps and constantly putting his planet in perilous situations.  He was currently embroiled in a bitter embargo with a planet known shortly as Redemption: Planet 24601 to be exact.

     The man who had accosted him was the ambassador for the King of Planet 86213.  His name was Sir James,  a friend of the family who always took a moment to chat.  Gerald hated the old man, much like he hated and felt contempt for everything around him.  He was a son of the Golden Utopia after all.  Nobody was above him.

    "Lord Moxley," the crusty old man greeted him with a firm handshake.

    Gerald pasted on his widest most genuine smile as he returned the gesture.

    "Sir James," he said more enthusiastically than he felt.  "It's always a pleasure to see you."

    "The pleasure is all mine, Lord Moxley," James replied.  He flagged down a passing waiter and offered a glass of wine to Gerald, who accepted dutifully and placed a coin on the server's tray.

    "So, how have things been going?"  James asked.  "Still applying for research grants?"

    "Yes."  Gerald nodded.  "Of course."

    "Wasting your time with Temporal theory?"  He asked with a chuckle.

    Gerald scrunched his nose up with disdain at the older man.  His theories were anything but; not with the greatest minds of the twenty first century trapped in the fissured time line.

    "All the same, Sir James," Gerald finally managed to reply.  "It's important research.  If someone out there decides they're going to fracture time...there ought to be measures against it.  There are always improvements to be made to the infrastructure."

    Sir James chuckled again.  "I don't think any one person is going to manage to fracture time, young man!"  He said.

    "Oh, you don't?"   Gerald arched a well manicured eyebrow at him.  "I beg to differ.  I can prove it."

    "Nobody's going to let you muck about with time, Moxley," Sir James replied.  He thought it was all funny.  He thought that Gerald was only playing with some kind of abstract idea.  He, like most every layman, thought that time couldn't be moved.  Time could be moved alright.  It could be moved, and shaped, and molded to Gerald's liking.  It could be broken, and most of all time could be erased; erased and replaced with Gerald's own vision for the present, and nobody would be the wiser; nobody except Gerald.  He was beginning to wonder if that would be enough when everybody he knew thought he was nothing more than a child with impossible ideas.  They would see about that.

    He smiled impishly into his glass of wine.

    "So, Where is Sir Phillip?" James inquired curiously and handily changing the subject.  "He usually accompanies you to these events."

    "Phillip?"  Gerald laughed out loud and clear.  Phillip was nobody.

    "Oh, dear Sir Phillip," he continued.  "I'm afraid the lad has taken a trip."

    "And you didn't go with him?"  James grinned with his reply.

    "No," Gerald replied.  "I thought he deserved a little time out...on his own, you know?"

    "Ah, yes!  Clever boy."  Sir James winked in his direction.  "You've done well with that one, sir."

    "Oh," Gerald muttered.  The truth was...he could have done so much better.
*****


    "Do you even think this is Earth?"  John asked as he looked out at the darkness.  He had just spent an hour trying to explain time travel to a bunch of uncomprehending faces with empty expressions on them.  Truth be told, he wasn't much for the fine details himself.  Bertram had filled in the blanks for him, and Phillip stood at the back of the group shaking his head and rolling his eyes as they stumbled along.

    Bertram consulted the computer.  "I'm not sure.  The map is all over the place.  It's starting to ripple."

    "Ripple?"  John repeated then sighed and turned towards his partner.  It was worse than they could have imagined.  If the fissure was starting to cause ripples throughout time he wasn't sure how anything was ever going to be right again.  "We could...not even exist here," John said.

    "Doesn't matter," Bertram mumbled as he flicked through various holographic screens by touching them.  "We exist sometime, and as long as that's true then we have hope."
    
    "These ripples could erase us," John pointed out, but Bertram only ignored him.

    He glanced up from his tinkering and stared at a point over John's shoulder.  "Look at that."

    John turned back towards the window and spied a horizon.

    "Oh, thank god, there's a sun," he whispered more to himself than to Bertram.

    "Blue sun," Bertram said as he noted the blueish-green glow starting to creep over the edge of the planet.  "I've never seen a blue sun before."

    "They're beautiful," John replied wistfully.  He had been born on a blue sun planet.  "It's the first good news we've gotten since this mess..."

    Bertram consulted the computer.

    "The atmosphere is breathable."

    "Awesome.  You think it's inhabited?"

    "Well, this thing really can't detect life forms," Bertram replied.  "You're lucky I had it fitted with the atmosphere upgrade.  I mean, I had to after the last time you sent me out to the field. You jumped me right onto a chlorine planet..."

    "It was a coordinate typo," John replied glumly.  "I thought I'd been forgiven for that already?"

    "I had to spend a whole month in plastic bubble with severe lung burns," Bertram snipped, but immediately soften when he noted the expression on John's face.  "And you're right; I did forgive you."

    "I should have been fired a long time ago," John said.  "I keep fucking up and it gets people hurt."

    "It's alright," Bertram muttered.  "We're going to get out of this.  Maybe nobody will even notice."

    "Yeah, I doubt that will happen."  John hung his head.  "These ripples are small now, but they're going to be felt sooner or later."

    "Look."  Bertram ignored his partner's depressive state and pointed towards the window where the light was slowly but surely becoming brighter and brighter.

    "Woods," John said as he spied the outline of trees in front of the window.

    "Yep," Bertram nodded.  "More good news."

    "Where there are trees there is water."

    "And food, and possibly civilization," Bertram said.  "See, there's hope yet, John.  We're going to fix this."

    "I wish I had your optimism," John replied with a sad smile.


*****

    
    Jerry had been outside for over an hour.  He wasn't going to sit around, inactive, and wait for the detectives to tell him what to do.  It was obvious that they were just about as clueless as to what was going on than anybody else.  He waited until everybody's attentions were otherwise occupied.  The kids who worked at the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant were huddled together in a corner, whispering about that mornings going on.  The girl, Jody, was glaring evil eyes at the other girl, who was sobbing into the Mexican kid's arms.  The future boy stood apart from them staring forlornly at the sobbing girl and her comforter.  It was at the point at which Jerry realized that nobody was paying any attention to him that he decided to try going outside.  It had been dark at the time, a pitch blackness so deep that he couldn't see his hand in front of him.  He had only been in the presence of such darkness once in his life before.  The family had taken a trip to South Dakota the year previously and taken a tour of the Crystal Caverns.  Deep underneath the earth, where no light had threatened to permeate the black, it had been that dark.  He hadn't even been able to see his hand in front of his face.  It was that dark there in the place that they had come to rest.

    Jerry found it fairly obvious that he was no longer at Knott's Berry Farm as soon as he stepped outside.  It wasn't some cruel joke after all.  No elaborate prank greeted him when he had opened the door and nearly fell three feet to the ground.  They hadn't landed on top of anything, it was just that the entire building, foundation and all had been transported and that left ample space between the door that had once led to a hallway and the ground.

    The ground was spongy and springy under foot.  Jerry had reached out with his hand from the prone position he had landed in and inspected his surroundings.  It was cold, the sponginess he had landed on was some kind of soil.  It took him about forty five minutes to crawl around unseeing for things to begin to take shape.  The planet was not without light.  It existed  He could make out the shape of trees, and rocks, and glowing eyes.  Eyes in the darkness watched him carefully but kept their distance.  He had been frightened at first but slowly became used to it, and as the sun crested...more gigantic than he had ever seen his own sun and a lot more blue, the eyes, two by two, disappeared.

    It was a beautiful sight.  Through all their family vacations throughout the country, he had never quite seen anything as amazing as that blue sunrise.  Of course, having to vacation with his wife's family usually put a damper on any spectacular natural features that the United States had to offer.  Constant browbeating and belittlement made even the Grand Canyon seem small.  He smiled a little to himself and wondered if he was the only one who was just a little bit excited about the prospect of exploring a whole new world.  They were like the intrepid explorers that came to America so many years before.  He wandered over to the nearest tree and contemplated the branches.  It seemed sturdy enough to climb and if he could make it then he would have a prime spot for viewing the sunrise on top of the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant's roof.  Jerry had never been a particularly fit man, but he was willing to try.  Without Esther at his side he felt like he was willing to try anything.


*****


    Bertram and John stood by the exit door as they watched the group peering out the windows towards their new surroundings.  They were going to have to keep them inside just a little bit longer.  Organization was key if they were going to go out and explore the new land.  Their first priority was to find food, and their second priority was to find civilization...if there was any to be found.  Hopefully they would be able to find the means to repair the Time Travel Device and return the humans to their correct place in time and space.  If not...the fissure would continue to erase time lines and replace them with new realities and the ripples would continue to spread out like a cancer, creating alternate dimensions that were not supposed to exist, and they wouldn't be able to do a thing about it.

    "Okay, I know you all want to get outside and check things out," Bertram said.  He smiled at them in a way that he thought would put them at ease.  "The good news is that this isn't a dark planet.  It's got a sun, and there is life here.  We'll be able to survive if we have to."

    Jody raised her hand then.  A perplexed expression adorned her face.  Bertram stared at her and waited for her to say something, but no words crossed her lips.  She only tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to speak first.

    "What's she doing?"  Bertram whispered at John, who stood dutifully at his shoulder trying to look intimidating.
    
    "You should pay attention in history class.  Earthian customs; she wants you to call her name before she says anything," John replied.

    "Really?" Bertram frowned.  "Yeah,  weird."  He looked back towards Jody.

    "Okay, Jody?"

    "Yes, um...that's not a sun..."

    "It's the sun," Bertram replied.  "Well, it's the star of whatever the hell galaxy we've landed in.  Obviously we're not on Earth.  A hot burning sun doesn't ever turn into a cold burning one."

    Jody raised her hand again.

    "Jody," Bertram replied instantly.  He looked to John for approval for quickly adapting to Earthian customs, and John only nodded and stifled a chuckle when Bertram turned his attention back to the group.

    "Right, if it's cold...why isn't there like, ice and snow outside?"

    "It's not cold," Phillip spoke up from his lonely corner.  He stood there glowering, his arms crossed.  Jody glared at him for answering her question then turned to Bertram, expecting him, as the figure of authority, to have a different answer: one she could believe.

    "He's right," Bertram admitted.  "It's not cold; it's just not as hot.  It's won't get hotter than..."  He paused, wondering what unit of temperature measure the gathered people used and found that he didn't remember.  He turned to John for help.  John leaned forward and whispered at him.

    "These people, from this time...fucking crazy.  They use all kinds of different measures for everything depending on where they live..."

    "So you don't know California, 2008, then?"

    "Ah, No," John confirmed, a bit embarrassed.

    "You should have paid attention in history class," Bertram replied smugly.

    "It won't get hot," Bertram finally addressed the crowd.  "Mildly pleasant temperatures all year long.  We'll go outside, and you'll be able to see.  Inhabitable planets orbit a cold Sun much closer than a hot one.  It's quite a spectacle, actually."

    "Like you can reach out and touch it," John replied, thinking of the sun on his home planet that loomed so large overhead that it dominated most of the sky.
  
    "Right, so we're going to need you to partner up...we've got to stick together through this.  Can't have anyone wandering off by themselves, right?  So, do that, and we'll go have a peek outside."

    Jody raised her hand again.  This time Bertram only waved his hand at her and nodded.

    "How do you know we can breath out there?" she asked.

    "Oh," Bertram smiled proudly.  "I've analyzed the atmosphere, it's good..."

    John smirked from behind him.  "Actually, Bert, we would have died already if it was a hostile atmosphere.  This hunk of building isn't exactly airtight."

    Bertram blanched at his overlooking the obvious in favor of technical gadgets.  He hadn't even thought of the lack of integrity a room, ripped out of a building in the twenty-first century would have.

    "Anyway, so, Partner up and we can go outside," Bertram said.

   
*****


    Jody approached Catherine cautiously.  She knew she had said some harsh things earlier that day, and she hadn't meant them.  It was only the beginnings of frustration starting to creep in on her.  She had wrestled them back and was hoping that the other girl would accept her apology.   Jody did not want to be partnered up with Ned or Jason no matter how nice and cute they were.  Sleeping in a muddled pile with them for a few hours had been quite enough interaction for her to last quite a while.

    "What do you want?" Catherine snapped at her as soon as it was apparent that Jody intended her as her target.  Catherine stood, her body nestled snugly underneath David's arm as it had been for most of the night.  She had barely faced away from him to look at Jody.

    "I'm sorry," Jody said.  "I didn't mean what I said earlier."

    Catherine frowned.  She knew it, but it didn't hurt any less.  She and Jody had hit it off within minutes of meeting.  To be turned on by the only group of people who were sort of familiar to her was scary.  She wouldn't have known what to do with herself had David not been so nice.

    "Look, we're all frustrated and tired," Jody said.  "I know the floor of this place isn't the most comfortable thing..."

    "You looked comfortable." Catherine replied, feeling the words slip out more snidely than she had intended.

    "Jason and Ned?"  Jody scoffed.  "Ugh.  They're just friends.  It was cold...anyway, I'm apologizing.  Can we be friends again?"

    Catherine looked cautiously up at David who nodded at her.  Apologies were good.  He had a few of his own to make.

    "We have to stick in this together," he spoke.  "We just...we've got to get along.  Can't have us splitting up like the time line right?"

    "We hardly know each other," Catherine replied softly.

    "We're human...from Earth, What's more important than that?"  David asked.

    "Aren't we all from Earth?"  Jody asked.

    "Who says?"  David eyed the Detectives who stood near the door quietly chatting with Phillip.

    "Them?  I thought they were from the future?"  Jody said.

    "Maybe both," David pondered.  "You should have raised your hand, Jody."

    She grinned and laughed.  "You're right, David.  Y'know, it sure seemed to confuse the geeky one for some reason."

    "Maybe they call on each other telepathically," Catherine added to the speculation with a laugh.  "They don't even know the Fahrenheit scale for goodness sake!"

    "Maybe they only measure temperature in 'Hot' and 'Not Hot' terms," Jody pondered.  "Am I hot or not?"

    The girls giggled manically, linked arms, and walked away towards the waiting Time Detectives chattering all the way.

    "Sorry, Man," Ned, who had arrived behind David, spoke up as they watched the girls depart.  Jason stood on his other side and shrugged.

    "I'd partner up with you, but I gotta stick with my man, Jase," Ned said.  "Guess you're stuck with the future freak."

    "Don't call him that," David muttered.

    "Hey, there's always Jerry," Jason replied sympathetically.

    They all cast their eyes around the room but could see no sign of the older man.

    "It's fine," David said with a shrug.  "Phillip's not so bad.  Maybe I'll learn something.  I've never met a mathematician before."

    "The kid is a mathematician?"  Ned said in a perplexed manner while scratching at his head.  "I can't even add."

    "He's a temporal mathematician," Jason provided.  "Don't you pay attention?"

    "What's temporal mean?" Ned replied.

    Jason eyed him up and down curiously.
  
    "It's fancy future man talk for the word 'time'," Jason replied.  "Now, come on.  I could use a little fresh air."  Ned followed dutifully along behind his pal leaving David alone.  He sighed to himself and marched over to the time detectives.  Everybody seemed to know that Phillip was from the future, but he wasn't sure that any of them but he and Catherine knew that he had been in on the plan to transport them through time.

  Phillip barely let his attention drift from the Time Detectives and their conversation long enough to register David sidle up next to him.  David said nothing.  He only stood there expectantly waiting for Phillip to acknowledge him and accept him as his partner.  Phillip said nothing.  He addressed the Time Detectives instead.

    "I think we should empty the champagne bottles..."

    Bertram and John turned to stare at him.

    "I don't think now is the time to be getting sloshed, kid," John said.

    "That's not what I mean." Phillip rolled his eyes at them.

    "I don't think it's such a bad idea," David offered helpfully.

    The men from the future just turned and stared at him.  They seemed to be doing  a lot of that.  He grinned nervously and chuckled slightly.

    "Look," Phillip explained.  "If you want to go out on an expedition.  Well, I know we have to find food and water soon.  So that's fine, but we're going to need to have something to carry the water in, right?  Might as well get the kit ready while we're here, so we don't have to come running back should we find what we're lookin' for.  Can't carry it in our hands, right?  We may as well go out prepared, yeah?"

    "He's kind of right," Bertram admitted.  He hated that the kid seemed to have more foresight then they did.  It was a continuing embarrassment in front of the twenty first century humans.

    "Alright," John heaved a heavy sigh.  He left his partner's side and led Jason, Ned, and the girls to the supply closet.  They could hear Ned griping about the waste of good alcohol from across the room.

    "What are you doing here?" Bertram finally asked David, who had remained calmly by Phillip's side.

    "I need a partner," David said.

    "What about Catherine?" Phillip replied glumly.

    "She made up with her friend," David told him.  "We decided that you're right, Detective Powers.  We've got to stick together in this, and we shouldn't be making enemies."

    "Is that so?" Phillip frowned at him.

    "Yeah." David nodded towards him.  He tried to smile, but Phillip only scowled in return.

    "Not him," Bertram spoke up, interrupting David's veiled attempt at apology.

    "Why not?"  David asked.  "There isn't anybody else."

    "That bald guy," Bertram replied.

    "Jerry?"  David said.  "He's not here."

    "What?"  Bertram said.  His eyes grew wide in shock, and he gripped his hair with his hands.  "You've fucking got to be kidding me.  What do you mean, 'he's not here'."

    "I mean just that," David replied with a shrug.  "He must have slipped out when nobody was looking"

    "Crap..."  Bertram looked around in a panic.  John was busy helping the Knott's Berry Farm gang empty out bottles of cheap champagne and Jerry was indeed nowhere to be seen.

    "Just..." he flailed his arms about, desperately gesturing in hopes that a plan might suddenly appear in his brain, but there was nothing.

    "Just stay here," he finally addressed David.  "Do not let him out of your sight!"  He pointed to Phillip who only deepened his scowl.

    And then Bertram opened the door to the outside and promptly dropped out of the building...landing face first on the spongy ground with a muffled thud.  When he looked up he saw David and Phillip peering down at him desperately trying to control their laughter.

    "Hilarious," Bertram replied.  He stood up and brushed himself off; an attempt to somehow regain his dignity, but it only caused more laughter.

    Up in the building David turned to Phillip, a bright smile on his face.  They had been through so much already, and it felt good to have a genuine laugh.

    "Are these guys really our best chance of getting back?"  he asked.

    Phillip faced David himself and found that they were only inches apart.  It would have been so easy for him to give in to temptation, but he quickly turned away to answer the question instead.

    "Yes,"  he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

    "We are so screwed," David decided.  His smile disappeared along with his laughter.  It wasn't funny anymore.
  
    "Do you need help?"  He called down to Bertram.

    Bertram only shook his head and commenced calling out Jerry's name.

    "We are screwed," Phillip said as he watched the man's peculiar searching technique.

    To everyone's surprise, especially Bertram's, Jerry called back almost instantly.  The man appeared over the roof of the building and pointed towards the sky.

    "Hey guys, you gotta come up here and see this," he shouted down at them.

    Bertram tossed a glance around his surroundings unfavorably then asked how Jerry had gotten up on the roof in the first place.

    "Climbed the tree," he shouted down with a grin.  He'd never climbed a tree before, somehow he felt lighter and fitter than he ever had and had managed to scale the tree in record time.

    Bertram finally shrugged.  He glanced towards the doorway and was going to ask if the boys needed help, but David and Phillip were already on the ground.

    "So we're going up the tree?" Phillip asked breathlessly.  Bertram nodded and both boys took off at a run and climbed up as quickly as two cats.  Bertram rolled his eyes.  Gravity was a funny thing when there was slightly less of it than one was used to.

    Jerry welcomed them to his rooftop perch and pointed at the rising sun.

    "It's huge," David marveled.

    "I bet you say that to all the guys," Phillip replied before he had a chance to think.  He hadn't managed to be that cheeky in a long while.  The mask had only changed his physical appearance.  In order to pretend to be Sir Phillip of Clim-Port he had to be on his best behavior.  When he was at Gerald's side, attending formal functions as his partner, anything less would have been suspicious.

    David turned from the looming blue sunrise to stare at Phillip, who shrugged then smiled.

    "What happened to your accent?" David said.  He had changed the subject instead of getting upset about the blatant flirting.  Jerry only sat a few feet away pretending not to eves drop.

    "This isn't an accent," Phillip admitted.

    "Come on," David replied.  "Haven't you done enough lying?"

    "I didn't lie," Phillip retorted.  "I just didn't answer your questions, because you don't really want to know the answers."

    "Oh, god, that is stupid." David turned his full attention to Phillip.  "I already know you had something to do with this whole mess.  I'm not an idiot, okay?"

    "I know you're not," Phillip replied.  "You're right, and I'm sorry."

    Jerry remained intent on the sun even though what he was hearing was news to him.

    "Everything you said was right," Phillip hissed.  "We fucked with the time line because we wanted to have fun, and to prove that we could do it without getting caught."

    "Prove it to who?" David asked, not lowering his voice a bit.

    "Ourselves."

    "What's the fucking point then?"  David raged.

    Jerry felt the urge to speak up before one of the boys shoved the other off the roof, but his attempt at diplomacy was hastily shoved aside.

    "Because we can," Phillip replied defiantly.  "That's the fucking point, as you say."

    "Come on guys," Jerry spoke up again.  "Look at the sun.  It's beautiful...it's...blue..."
    
    David glanced up at the sky yet again and sighed.  "No enemies."  He muttered to himself.  "You're really trapped here, Phillip?"

    "I really am," Phillip confirmed.  "I was used and I was dumped, and this is my real accent.  I had been wearing a mask...the device that makes you desirable...changes your appearance.  That was how Mary tricked you all into this room.  Trust me, that woman needed a lot of help.  It's a cheap and easy way around plastic surgery in the future, but with the right programming and the wrong hands it can do more than that.  It sort of short circuits people's brains...makes them think you are the most desirable thing in the universe, but it can't change an accent or your own behavior.  I had to adopt the American one to fit in; old habits die hard.  I suppose I'm starting to ease back in to my own.  I'm from the future, do you really think we speak like you do in the future?  We may have fucked up a time line, but occasionally the future evolves on its own."

    "That's nice," David dismissed his lecture.  "Are you really sorry?"

    "Yes!" Phillip nodded positively.  "I really am.  This is a fine mess we've gotten into.  Depending on how it goes in the future...if Gerald likes the way things change because you've gone...then I'm starting to doubt he'd fix the time line at all."

    "You're just starting to think that?"  Jerry asked.  "Seriously?"

    Phillip only shrugged and turned towards the sun.

    "My galaxy has four stars," he changed the subject.  "My planet is the only one that is hospitable towards life.  The others...they're too close to the suns to sustain anything besides dirt.  They call it the Golden Utopia because the suns are always rising or setting.  Everything is always bathed in a golden light."

    "I still can't believe I'm on another planet."  David lay down on the roof and admired the sun.  "I can't believe you're from another planet...and the future.  Shit.  I was thinking about a career in landscaping yesterday. How can I ever go back to that?"

    "I know what you mean," Jerry replied.  "I was a contractor stuck in a dead end marriage yesterday...You met my wife's family, right?"

    David chuckled to himself then replied in the positive.

    "This is amazing," Jerry said.  "Us being stuck here might be the end of time as we know it..."

    Phillip laughed at that.

    "Time never ends," he said.  "It only gets bigger.  Sometimes it gets rewritten..."

    "Okay, so time gets rewritten." Jerry shrugged.  He felt no ill will for being corrected.  "It's still the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me in my life!  Maybe I'll be able to write a best selling novel one day."

    "Maybe you will," Phillip said.  He was amused, for he knew exactly what contributions each of them would make towards their society.  He wasn't going to tell them though, and he hoped they wouldn't ask.  He didn't want to cause any further time ripples if he could help it.

    "Yeah right," Jerry rellied with a snort.

    "Come on, Jer," David consoled him.  "It's never too late to follow a dream."

    "Thank you, Mr. After School Special, but do I need to remind you that your life isn't half over?  And you haven't spent most of it languishing in a totally empty and unsatisfying relationship with a psycho from hell, have you?"

    "No," David shook his head.  "I haven't.  I'm concentrating on my studies right now, unlike some twin sisters I could meant... Oh, Mimi."  He frowned.  He hadn't thought of his twin sister since they'd landed.  The thought of never having to wait in line outside the door to their one bathroom was suddenly the worst possible thing he could imagine.

    Phillip reached out and tentatively patted David's shoulder.  Jerry watched them and smiled on.

    "She'll be okay," Phillip said.

    "You don't understand," David replied with a choked sob.  "She's my twin, and I miss her.  Stupid eyebrows and boyfriends aside.  I don't think I'm going to be okay."

   "I'm going to go back down."  He announced after a moment.  "I think I need some time alone."

    "I can't let you do that," Phillip replied.

    "What?"  David scowled at him.  "I just need a little time..."

    "David, the Detectives said we need a partner if we're going to go wandering around these woods and I think they're right."

    "Oh, please," David rolled his eyes.  "Master of Temporal Scheming, I think you can take care of yourself."

    "Scheming is one thing," Phillip said.  "Getting eaten by a giant bipedal saber-toothed beastie, or getting lost in the woods is another."

    "I saw eyes," Jerry said.

    Phillip and David took a moment from their sniping to consider what Jerry had just said.

    "Eyes?"  Phillip finally asked.

    "In the forest, when it was dark."  Jerry replied.  "Giant yellow eyes.  It was kind of scary."

    Phillip and David then looked at each other and grinned.

    "What now?"  Jerry asked.

    "You think scary..." David started.

    And Phillip finished his sentence, "...and we think dinner."


*****


    Jody and Catherine didn't have to go far to find fresh water.  They may have only been half a mile out when they ran into a stream.  They gleefully filled their empty champagne bottles then looked back towards where they came from.

    "We're not lost are we?"  Catherine asked.

    "Nah," Jody said.  "You worry too much, you know that?"

    "I can't help it," she replied.  "None of this really makes any sense.  I'm just kind of going with it."

    "Me too."

    "It's funny," Catherine said.  "Us girls down here gathering the water while the boys are goofing off on top of the roof.  What the heck do you think they're doing up there?"

    "Looking at that funny sun," Jody guessed with a shrug.  "It's not that exciting.  It's only a star."

    "Yeah," Catherine laughed.  "But we've never been this close to a star before...did you see how big it looked?"

    Jody shrugged and painted a smile on her face.  She was going to act unimpressed with the future if it killed her.

    "Never mind that space business," she changed the subject.  "So...David?  He's cute, right?"  She grinned at Catherine as the girl flushed embarrassment.

    "He is," she said.  "But he likes that future guy."

    "Seriously?" Jody marveled.  "I had no idea."

    "He wouldn't shut up about him," Catherine admitted.  "It was only obvious after a while.  Why do you think I went with you in the first place?"

    "You're still mad at me?"  Jody asked.

    "Nah." Catherine shrugged.  "Stealing the thingy was a stupid thing to do.  I know it now.  Imagine working with parts you can't even see?  Crazy.  I wish I'd have just stayed put and waited for the detectives to tell us something.  I think they're kind of stupid, but they still know more about this stuff than we do."

    "Yeah," Jody nodded in agreement.  "It's not your fault though.  If I'd have known what that thing was I might have tried it myself."

Detective Anne Steele had been reliving the same horrible day over and over again.  She was only just going through the motions.  Eating, sleeping; none of it mattered.  At the end of the day it would be the same day all over again.  No matter what she did the alarm clock always went off at the unreasonable hour of five a.m.  It had been the hour that she usually got ready for work. She had gone the first few days, but after that it seemed particularly hopeless.  In escaping from custody, Alrice Van Die Welt had definitely succeeded in making her life a living hell just as he had promised.  She had no idea what was happening in the present and wondered if anybody was working on getting her out of the impossible loop.  She wondered if anybody remembered her at all.  Just in case she unplugged the alarm clock every night.

    One day she overslept. 

    The afternoon light was streaming through her windows and she woke with a start.  This day was different.  Detective Steele couldn't contain her excitement. She bounced out of bed and inspected the clock that still stood, screen blank, on her nightstand.  She clapped her hands gleefully and scurried about the apartment getting ready for a new day.  She hadn't had a new day in almost a year.

    She bounced into work more exuberantly than she ever had before and walked up to the lobby desk.  She glanced around, and couldn't help but wonder if they had remodeled.  Things looked the same, but she couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that they were different.  The receptionist in the lobby eyed her curiously.  He was new, she noticed, but that didn't surprise her  She had been gone for months.

    She smiled brightly at the man.  She was happy to be back at work.  She was even contemplating being happy about seeing John Arker.  He hadn't been the best partner at the time, but he was only a rookie.  She should have known that Alrice Van Die Welt would be too much for him all by himself.

    "Beautiful day," she murmured at the receptionist which did nothing to remove the perplexed expression from his face.

    "Can I help you?"  he asked.

    "Yes," She grinned.  "You're new here, right?  I'm Detective Anne Steele, been stuck in a time loop for...Oh, eight months."

    "I've worked here for ten years," the man replied.  "Stuck in a time loop, you say?"

    Anne stared at him in horror.  Ten Years.  She couldn't have been stuck in the loop for ten years.  It wasn't possible.
    
    "Oh, my god."  She broke down then and sank to a heap on the floor in front of the desk.

    The receptionist tried to see where she had disappeared to as he peered over the desk, but she wasn't visible from his vantage point.  He sighed laboriously and stood up, pausing at a nearby water cooler to fill a small cup with water.  He was well used to the crazies that wandered up to the precinct desk on a daily basis, but it didn't make it any less troublesome.

    "Here you go."  He sat down beside her and handed over the cup of water.  She gulped it down and crushed the paper cone in her hand.  Frustration and anger showed clearly on her face.

    "I kept count," she muttered.  "Eight months, give or take...a few days.  Not years!  Not Ten years!  Do I look ten years...crap."

    She knew as well as anybody that one didn't age in a time loop.

    "I'm going to call somebody up to take you to the Captain," he said. He would have taken her himself, because he felt sorry for her.  He was a step below a secretary in the grand scheme of things, but to work at the precinct one had to go through the core courses of Temporal Studies.  Time Loops were rough for everybody involved even though the technology had been developed to easily break out of them.  He couldn't help but wonder how the woman had gotten herself trapped in one.  It could cause major problems in time if an important person was trapped in one for too long.  Ten years was too long.

    "Yes, you call the Captain," she said positively.  "He'll remember me.  He'll know what to do."

    The Receptionist stared at her like she had gone insane.

    "What?"  She snapped at him.

    "I'm sorry," he replied, beginning to believe her story.  "But the Captain is a woman."

*****

    The rustling of nearby branches is what alerted Jody and Catherine to another presence.  They were frightened at first, but eventually came to the conclusion that it was only Jason and Ned messing with them.

    "Come on out boys," Jody said with a roll of her eyes and a toss of her head.  "You're not funny."

    There was no answer, only the continued rustling of the underbrush.

    "I don't think it's them," Catherine said nervously.
    
    "I told you, you worry too much," Jody replied.  She called out again.  The rustling got closer.

    "Over there," Catherine pointed. 

    The plants parted and a large cloven creature peered it's head out and regarded them curiously.

    "Is that what I think it is?" Catherine said with incredulity.

    "Yep," Jody replied with a sharp intake of breath. 

    "It's a fucking unicorn."

    "Yep," Jody agreed.

    The animal shook its mane at them and bent down to sip from the stream.

    "I think it's time to get back," Jody offered.  Catherine wholeheartedly agreed.  They stood up and ran back the way they came leaving their champagne bottles behind.

   
*****

    Jason, Ned and David stood in a grinning line awaiting Jerry's approval.  He only shook his head at them.  They stood, stripped of their shirts and smeared in mud.

    "We've got to be stealthy," Ned had claimed when he came up with the idea.  If they were going to be hunting then it was the only logical course of action in his mind.

    "How do I look?" David spread his arms wide and looked towards Phillip.

    "Ridiculous," the boy from the future replied with his own grin.  "I'm not going to complain though..."

    Jason groaned at them and rolled his eyes.  Ned stooped down and took up a handful of the mud that had been created by the dumping of the champagne that very morning.  He grinned impishly and slung it at David.  It landed on his chest with a loud squelch and Ned laughed.  Jason stood between them mouth agog, and David only looked down at himself in shock that he had just been assaulted with a mud ball.

    "Look, Ned's a little slow, David, you're going to have to give him a break," Jason said in an attempt at diplomacy.

    David shrugged, then swooped down to collect his own mud ball, which only nicked Ned's shoulder.  Ned laughed and lunged towards the other boy.  Catching Jason in between they all tumbled into the mud and commenced wrestling.

    Phillip stood next to Jerry and sighed.  "Look at that." he gestured towards the pile.  "It only took me creating a fissure through all of space and time to realize my biggest fantasy."

    Jerry eyed him sideways, then shrugged and laughed.  No enemies, as David would say.  He patted Phillip on the back.  "Whatever floats your boat, Future Boy."

    The Girls crashed into their midst then.  Their fright was forgotten as soon as they caught sight of David, Jason, and Ned rolling around in the dirt, their empty champagne bottles lined up against the side of the building.

    "What the hell are you doing?"  Jody screeched at them.  "We're out there in the dangerous wilderness looking for water, and you're rolling around in the mud?  We are not washing your damn clothes you idiots."

    They stopped then.  She had managed to attract their full attention.

    "What happened?"  Jerry asked.  He wondered briefly if the girl was only upset at their apparent goofing off.  It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for Esther to behave that way.  She would shun him for the rest of the day and he would end up sleeping on the couch for nothing more than the crime of sitting down and watching the game on a Sunday afternoon.

    "Hello," Catherine spoke up.  "There are unicorns out there."

    The boys only stared at her.

    Even Phillip, who had seemed to have more of a grasp on their surroundings and time travel in general than even the so called Time Detectives, seemed genuinely shocked.

    "That's crazy," he decided.

    "We're not crazy," Jody huffed.   "It was there, plain as day.  Big fucking horse with a giant horn coming out of its head."

    "Was it white?"  Jason asked, stifling a giggle.

    "Did it have wings?"  Ned contributed without stifling any of his amusement.  His laughter set David and Jason off.  Even Phillip and Jerry were having a hard time containing themselves.

    "This is serious, guys,"  Jody whined.

    "It was brown," Catherine said.  "And the horn was like an orangy yellow color."

    "Do you know of a planet with Unicorns?" Jody addressed Phillip directly.

    "No," he said.  His expression turned serious.  "That is a really unexpected side effect.  We thought...y'know.  Maybe the fruit would be bigger if Cath..."  He trailed off and stared at his feet.

    "If Cath what?"  Catherine said.  The rest of them were all intent on his answer, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to lie his way out of it.

    "Catherine...you get a bill passed in your time.  Genetic engineering is a highly regulated industry because of it.  Without it..."

    "Unicorns?"  Catherine replied skeptically.

    "Chimera."  Phillip nodded.  "I'm guessing.  I mean...it's just a guess.  Gerald could have flung us so far out of the known solar systems that...these things have evolved naturally and we just haven't discovered them yet but..."

    "Looks too close to the myth?" David asked.

    Phillip nodded miserably.  "If it looks like it came from a human's imagination, it probably has.  We do have a tendency to recreate the world as we see it."

    "Good Job," Ned laughed. 

    "Tell me, Phillip," David asked, hands on hips and a scowl on his face.  "Did you see Unicorns?"

    "Come on," Jason spoke up.  "Remember what you said, Dave?  We're all trying to take it to heart. It's not going to help if you don't take your own advice and just keep getting mad at him over and over again."

    "There is some good news," Phillip offered sincerely, hoping to get back on David's good side in as short amount of time as possible.

    "Yeah?"  Jody asked.  "How are giant horned beasts good news?  Horses by themselves are bad enough, but now we've given them pointy instruments of death..."

    "A Chimera wouldn't be able to reproduce on its own," Phillip interrupted her.  "It's a genetically modified thing...bits of this grafted into bits of that. At best they would only produce more horses if they weren't completely sterile."

    "Bla, bla, bla!"  Catherine rolled her eyes at him while gesturing a flapping mouth with her hand.  "You talk way too much, Phil."

    "Don't call me that."  He scowled at her.

    "Just get to the point," Jason stepped in.

    "The point is," Phillip said.  "Someone had to make the Chimera...if that's what this unicorn thing is.  Therefore..."

    "Civilization!" Jerry exclaimed.

    "Exactly."  Phillip grinned. 

    They all stood around proudly grinning at their hypothesis.  Hope didn't seem like it was so far off after all.

    "So, who's going to tell those detectives?"  Jody asked.

    "Can we just leave them here?" Ned giggled.

    "As much as I think we would all love to do that," Phillip replied.  "We're in this together.  Isn't that right, David?"

    David nodded solemnly.

*****

    Lord Gerald Moxley sat in his room listening to the pleasant chirping of the griffin.  He smiled to himself.  It had been an unexpected change in the natural order of things, but he had gone out that day and seen the pet shops offering genetically modified creatures.  He had purchased one.  The upper half of the creature had the appearance of a jay bird and the lower half seemed to be a small tabby colored house cat.

    He smiled to himself as he presented the creature to his parents who didn't bat an eyelash at it.  It was as if such genetic anomalies had always existed.  Gerald decided he was going to wait a few days and see what other changes were bound to crop up.  He had his hypothesis, but he couldn't know for sure and he wanted to have enough data to present his findings. 

    He would be revered.  Oh, yes.  He would make sure of it.

*****

    "I think you're presuming a bit much," John said. 
    
    "It's a logical conclusion," Phillip argued.  He had taken the detective aside while the rest of the gang distracted Bertram.

    "So the girls come back with stories of Unicorns." John scoffed.  "So what?  They're girls."

    "I may not be an expert," Phillip said, "but I'm pretty sure that girls don't necessarily have anything to do with unicorns."

    "Those two have over active imaginations," John replied.  "Just because they see something in the woods and get scared doesn't mean there's unicorns, and if there is, it doesn't mean they're chimera.  We're done here.  Go run along to your little boyfriend over there."

    Phillip tossed a glance back at David then turned his glare on Detective Arker.

    "You have a computer," he stated, intent on ignore the dig the detective had made towards him in favor of changing the subject. 

    "Yes," John replied.  "Bertram has a computer."

    "So, do a scan for life forms."

    "We can't," John admitted.  "Bert's computer doesn't have the upgrade..."

    "Doesn't need one." Phillip shook his head.

    "You hear that, Bert?" John shouted over to his partner. 

    Bertram, who was happy to extricate himself from the rest of the group, trotted over.

    "Hear what?" he asked.

    "This kid thinks you don't need the upgrade to detect life signs."

    Bertram laughed.

    "Yeah, no," he said.  "I'm sorry, but I don't have the hardware for that."

    "Those are built to monitor and detect temporal signatures, and you have the atmosphere upgrade, correct?"

    Bertram nodded.

    "Give it to me."  Phillip stood with his hand outstretched awaiting the only bit of technology they had left to be handed over.  Bertram was not so keen to give in to his wishes.

    "I can modify the code for the atmosphere module to detect trace elements of fossil fuels in the air...if they happen to use it here."

    "And that's a big if," John laughed.  "Not many planets still do.  Not when there are better sources of energy."

    "Which may not have been invented at all now,"  Phillip replied snidely and then pointed at David.  "Get me?"

    "Okay," John replied, a little bit of his cockiness leaking away.

    "Then I can also modify the code that detects the temporal signal to identify high grade electrical fields instead.  If there are people, there is electricity.  They may not travel through time, but they still need power."

    "And just how do you propose to do that?" Bertram replied.  He crossed his arms defiantly.  He had long been the most adept, technically minded person in the squadron.  To be shown up by someone at least five years his junior would be humiliating.

    Phillip only gestured towards the computer in Bertram's pocket.  Bertram sighed and started to hand the device over.

    "How do we know this isn't sabotage?" John asked.  He  placed his hand over the computer before the transaction could be complete.

    "I guess you don't," Phillip replied.

    John and Bertram glanced at each other and sighed.  It was their best shot.

    Phillip received the device and punched up the holographic projector.  The screen flashed up in front of him, attracting the attention of the entire group.  They had only ever seen such things in the realm of science fiction on their televisions.

    Phillip took in the display and then quickly swiped his hand through the air, changing screens at an ever quickening pace.  It looked as if he were only poking at thin air, but somehow the data was transferred from the projection to the computer.  Bertram studied what he was doing carefully.  It was apparent that the boy had far more advanced knowledge of formulas and coding than he did.  If he was going to learn something, he was going to learn by watching. He definitely wasn't going to straight out ask the kid.  Bertram suddenly knew why only the best of the best were chosen to work in the future division.  Dealing with people from the future was far more frustrating than he had realized.  It took a moment to register that what he was feeling while watching Phillip recode his computer must have been something akin to what the people from the past felt when he had to deal with them.

    "There." Phillip handed the device back to Bertram after only a few minutes of tinkering.  "I think you'll find that civilization is that way."

    He pointed to the East with a huge grin on his face.

    Bertram frowned, took a look at the display, and sighed.  Phillip was right. The Atmosphere module was registering high levels of carbon dioxide and the beacon for an unauthorized time signature was flashing brightly in the direction which the boy was pointing...apparently having come to indicate the high levels of electrical output required to run a mid-sized city.

    The girls threw their hands up with giddy glee and hugged each other as they jumped up and down in excitement.  They then turned their attention to Phillip and enveloped him in their hug.  He looked uncomfortable to suddenly be the center of their attention and his discomfort only grew as the boys joined in the rather large group hug.

    "Come on, kids," John broke up the revelry in a stern voice.  "Here's the plan.  We're going to get our bottles, visit the stream the girls found, and fill them up. Please, try to avoid any unicorns.  Then we'll follow the signal towards the city and see if we can't find a way to get out of here from there.  If they haven't any time travel technology...which seems likely since we haven't picked up a signal...at least we may be able to find the parts to coble together a TTD.  If Phillip has the programming wits to encode the device..."

    "I do." Phillip replied solemnly.

    "Alright," John said.  "Let's get to it then!"

   After the champagne bottles had been distributed for the second time, David approached the detectives.   Phillip still stood in between them, his shoulders slumped, and his eyes pointing towards the ground.

    "What is it, David?" John asked him.

    "Phillip's my partner," he said, determined not to back down despite John's attempts at being intimidating.  "I'm not supposed to let him out of my sight."

    "Look, we found Jerry," Bertram nodded towards the older man who was chatting brightly with the two girls as they walked along.  "Time for a new partner."

    "I don't want a new partner," David said resolutely. 

    "It's okay," Phillip addressed him.

    David shook his head.

    "He's in custody," Bertram spoke up quietly.  "You know he's responsible for this.  He may not have been the brains behind the whole thing, but after that show he just put on...I really don't think that kind of massive Time Storm could be orchestrated without his skill set."

     "I don't care," David declared.  

    "You know what?"  John addressed Bertram.  "I don't really care either at this point.  He's got nowhere to run.  Why don't we just let the kiddies play?"

    "You can stop calling me a kid any time now," Phillip said a bit crossly. 

    "It's not a good idea," Bertram replied hesitantly.

    "When has that ever stopped us?"  John shrugged.  "Go on."  He shoved Phillip towards David.

  

*****

    They had each found a place by the stream to fill their bottles.  Jody and Catherine huddled together, feeling slightly ill at ease at the thought of another unicorn happening by.  After a moment Jody decided to fill the uneasy silence with awkward conversation.

    "What if it's an alien civilization," Jody hypothesized. "And we're the only humans left in the whole galaxy!"

    "Don't talk like that, Jody," Catherine replied.

    "I mean, what I'm getting at..." She grinned impishly at her friend.  "...is what if we have to repopulate the species."

    "Oh, god!"  Catherine gasped then started giggling.

    "Heh,"  Jody shook her head at her own audacity.  If only the boys could hear her talk in such a manner.  They would be beside themselves with shock.

    "Come on," Jody egged her friend on.  "We've been stuck with all these guys for almost two days by now...it must be.  You can't say you haven't thought about it."

    "I have," Catherine admitted guiltily.   "But David's spoken for."

    "I knew you liked him!"  Jody grinned. 

    "He's really, really, super nice," Catherine replied.  "Why do the nice ones always go for the bad boys?"  She took pause to glance at the most unlikely bad boy she had ever seen. He was seated upstream beside David, their bare feet submerged in the water up to their ankles.  "but I always go for the unavailable...actually, I don't go for anybody.  I'm too shy."

    Jody gave her a consoling hug then.  "I know what you mean," she said.  "I spend so much time taking care of my mom..."  She paused at the thought of her old mother and wondered how the woman was getting alone without her.  "Anyway," she continued after a moment.  "Since you're kind of stuck with Jason and Ned...I'll have to recommend Jason.  He's a dreamer, that one, but at least he's not a pot-head.  Jason has potential."

    "So you really like Ned?"  Catherine teased her.  "I mean, if you're handing Jason over to me and David and Phillip have their thing..."

    "No!"  Jody cried out, momentarily attracting the attention of Jason and Ned, who had busied themselves with a splashing fight in the middle of the stream.  She waved at them and they continued on about their business much to the chagrin of the detectives who were trying to corral them into a less wet area of the wilderness.

    Jody gazed at her hands then looked at Catherine with a bright red blush on her face.

    "I kind of like that detective guy.  The one with glasses that always looks confused...not the asshole one."

    "Oh, my gosh!"  Catherine gasped.  "Detective Powers?  Get out!"

    "I'm serious," Jody replied.  "Am I not allowed to have a thing for the future dude?  He can't be that much older than me."

    "No," Catherine agreed.  "You know what?"

    "What?"

    "We should go for it," she decided. 

    Jody paused and considered this for a moment.

    "I think you're right," she decided.

*****

    Detective Anne Steele had been escorted from the building, kicking and screaming the entire way.  The receptionist felt sorry for her.  He had dismissed her words as merely the ranting of a lunatic, but something about it gave him pause.  He'd let her pass security to speak with the chief.  Seeing her cursing as she was tossed from the building left him knowing that he was going to be in trouble.  At best his boss would dress him down and he'd receive a short suspension.  At worst he would be fired.  He sighed to himself and grabbed another cup of water as he headed outside himself to see if he could accost Anne before she disappeared.

    She hadn't disappeared.  She sat sullenly on the precinct steps with her head in her hands.  He sat down beside her and offered the paper cup.

    "What are you?" She muttered caustically even though she accepted the water and tossed it back quickly and thirstily.  "The water boy?"

    "I'm SC Anderson."  He supplied.

    "SC?  What's that short for?"  She seemed to be laughing at him.

    "It means Senior Cadet...My name is Arwyn," he supplied.  "I thought you were a detective?"

    "I..." She paused then sighed.  Things had certainly changed in the eight months she had been in the loop, for she refused to believe it had been any longer than that.  The changes were far more suspicious than the mere passage of time.  The building layout was all wrong, the staff was all wrong, and the receptionist was spouting rankings that had never existed in the past or in the future.

    "I did once, a long time ago," she finally replied.  "I'm going to tell you something and you might think I'm crazy, but I'm not."

    "Okay," he said a bit skeptically.

    "I think the time line has changed."  She whispered almost inaudibly.

    He laughed.

    "You think I'm crazy," she asserted with a sad sigh.  "It all makes sense though. None of this stuff is the same as when I got trapped.  It's how the time loop was broken.  If it never existed in the first place, how could I remain stuck in it?"

    "It's been a long time," he replied.  "Ten years, you said so yourself.  People lose track of things when they're in a time loop..."

    "Arwyn." She turned to glare at him.  "You said it's been ten years.  I said nothing of the sort.  I just thought you were new because you didn't work here before the time loop. If I'm right and the time line has changed maybe you never existed before."

    He suddenly looked shocked and dismayed at the thought so she quickly amended her words.

    "I mean, that might be it, or you might just have had a different job.  Seriously?  Ten years as a Cadet?"

    "I like my job," he said, thankful to have any discussion of his possible non-existence cut short.  "I'm sorry, but there's only one way something like that could happen..."

    "A fissure.  I know."

    "But that's what we're here for," he continued to protest her assertions without calling her outright crazy.  "We prevent these things."

    "Not this one,"  she replied.  "That's why we have to fix it."

    "We who?"  He eyed her suspiciously.

    "You believe me right?"  she asked.

    "Maybe."

    "That's good enough," she decided.  "It looks like we're in this together."

*****

    "So tell me about yourself," Jody sat down next to Bertram, who was hastily trying to puzzle out the changes that Phillip had made to his computer on the small built in display.  It was far less expansive than the holographic projection and  not at all the best way to scan through the thousands of lines of code. He would be damned if he was going to let Phillip catch him at it though.

    Bertram looked up, startled, and quickly closed out the screen.  He looked over at John first as if he were seeking his partner's approval before speaking to the girl.  John only rolled his eyes emphatically and stood up.

    "We've sat around enough," John said with a scowl.  "Time to gather the troops."

    "I can help," Bertram offered quickly, glancing nervously at Jody as he did so.

    "Nah." John shook his head.  "I'm totally good with handling this on my own."

    He winked at them and trotted away.

    "So, you're a time detective," Jody said.  "How do you get into such a field?"

    "I uh..."  Bertram frowned at her.  "There are rules about sharing stuff from the future."

    "Who back home is going to believe any of this shit anyway?  Holographs...Unicorns...they'll think I'm insane.  My lips are sealed."

   "Well, I applied to the academy like anybody else."

    "I suppose it's called the Time Academy," Jody snorted laughter then quickly clapped her hands over her mouth.

    Bertram eyed her curiously.  "It is called that..."

    "Right. This is totally weird," she said.

    "I know what you mean," he admitted his own frustration.  "I been workin' with this tech for years.  You know, I was the best tech guy in the entire precinct.  Rubbish at field work...how the hell I ended up on another planet..."

    "You shouldn't let that John dude push you around." Jody smiled brightly at him.  She scooted closer and bumped him lightly with her elbow.

    "I know," Bertram sighed.  "It's just...he's kind of an act before thinking guy and we end up in these kind of situations because I'm a think before I act kind of guy, and it takes too long for me to think.  If that even makes any sense."

     "It makes perfect sense," Jody replied.  She bit her lip then and looked at Bertram who was facing straight ahead, lost in thought.  She decided to take the opportunity to make a move and slipped her hand into his.  He broke out of his reverie to turn and stare at Jody's hand entwined in his.  He didn't break the embrace; he only looked up at her with a confused look on his face.  It made her giggle as that seemed to be his default expression.  She thought it was endearing.

    "I'm scared," she said when she was finished with her giggle fit.  She squeezed his hand.

    He sat there for a moment, unsure of what he should do...then he pried her hand away and chuckled nervously.

    "I'm sorry, Jody," he said.  "There are rules."

    "Oh?"  She frowned at him.  "What about them?"  She pointed at David and Phillip who sat across the stream from them with their heads together.  "He's even older than you are."

    "He's not older," Bertram replied crossly.  "He's from a further future.  That's what we call it, and this isn't about that at the moment.  This is about me being a figure of authority.  It wouldn't be right, okay?"

    Jody pouted at him, but he stood his ground. 

    It was then that the bushes were rustling again.  Jody rolled her eyes at what she thought was simply another unicorn but it wasn't.  A strange creature covered in colorful dread locked hair crept out of the bushes and chirped at them.  It cocked its head curiously; two bulbous eyes the only visible feature beneath the hair.  Two long spindly black legs stuck out from beneath it.

    "What the fucking fuck is that?" Jody squeaked at Bertram.  Hand holding protocol abandoned, she grabbed hold of him and dug her fingers into his shoulder.

    David and Phillip noticed the creature from their vantage point as well.  They stared curiously at it.  It continued to chirp at them, demanding their attention and shaking its purple locks at them.

    "Now that..." Phillip whispered.  "Is not even a real thing."

    It was then that the nets dropped from above.  The two creatures that had been in the trees descended and the three chirped happily at each other.  They had made the capture.  Their masters would be proud.

    There was a purple creature, a blue one, and a yellow one.  They chirped at each other triumphantly while the captured squirmed around in the nets, trying desperately to break free.  Any yelling and screaming that they did was futile.  The rest of the group had been captured by similar creatures.  Thin arms extended from underneath their thick hairs and they dragged the nets through a nearby path to a clearing.  There stood two unicorns hitched up to an enclosed metal cart.  They loaded in their quarry and closed the door behind with a loud clang. 

    The first thing John did was try to grab the handle and was only met with a stunning electric shock that knocked the wind out of him and left a stinging burn in the shape of a door handle emblazoned on the skin of his hand.  He had been knocked onto his back and lay on the floor of the carriage clutching his hand and biting his lip so hard that it broke skin as he tried to keep from making a sound.  David was the first to spring into action.  He snatched John's hand away and poured out an entire bottle of water onto the burn.  It hissed, and smoked, and filled the cab with the acrid scent of burned flesh.  Then John screamed, and David poured another bottle of cold water on him. 

    The injury was excruciating at first.  Then it felt numb.  John reclaimed his hand from David and muttered a thanks then retired to sit in a corner and whimper to himself.  The rest of the group sat in nervous silence.

    Jody slipped her hand into Bertram's once again, and this time he didn't protest when she squeezed.  He squeezed back and let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

    In the corner, where John sat trying to keep from crying, he thought that if they ever did get back and he didn't get dismissed from the police force, he was definitely taking an early retirement

    It seemed that they had been traveling a long time, bumping along as the cart traversed the wooden paths.  There were no windows and even though the sun wasn't hot, the metal container in which they were trapped still managed to retain what little heat the sun managed to produce.  They gave thanks that they had managed to fill up their bottles with water before they had been abducted.  Eventually they came upon an encampment and the creatures removed them from their prison and shackled them together by the ankles.   The boys stood in a row, their sense of defeat permeated the air.  Jody worriedly kept an eye on Bertram, and Catherine stood at the end of the line quietly sobbing to herself.  She would have given anything to go home and lock herself in her room intent on a night full of studying.  It was so simple to be with herself and just ignore everything that happened around her life.  She didn't think she could handle it now that things were directly endangering her.

    "It's okay," Jason murmured  from his place ahead.  "We'll just explain."

    "They don't even speak English," she cried as an increasing number of creatures hopped out of the woodwork and herded them towards a large tent at the center of the encampment. 

    Once they entered they were greeted, much to their surprise, by a very human looking woman.  She had severe features, her black hair pulled back into a tight bun, and she was wearing some sort of obviously military dress.  She scowled at the troop before her disapprovingly.  The stench of time travel was upon them.  It had been banned several hundred years ago and there hadn't been a traveler to their system since.  At least there had never been one that made it back alive.  That was the way her queen liked it.

    "Who is in charge here?" she stood up and demanded.  Her hand slammed down on the table to punctuate her question.

    "I am," John stood up as straight as he could, still cradling his hand.

    "I see you are stupid enough to have tried the electronic door lock!" she smirked at him.  "That's going to scar."

    "Okay, then."  John scowled.  He had long since lost all feeling in his hand.  It was a disturbing development that he hoped would eventually resolve itself.  As it were, he was going to do his best to speak for the people he had come to feel some sort of responsibility for. 

    "Who are you?"  He eyed her.

    "That is for me to know," she snapped.  "Now, you are going to tell me why you have been trespassing on our lands and violating the Holochrome treaty."

    "We were kidnapped," John replied more excitedly than he should have.  He knew the Holochrome treaty.  He knew where they were.

    "Kidnapped?"  The woman regarded him with an arched expression.

    "Yes.  Kidnapped and transported through a temporal storm..."

    She laughed then.  John suddenly felt that knowing where they were was almost as bad as not.  He realized that he was dealing with Royal Chromians: a race of human that had removed themselves from all existence.  They were the stuff of legend, on the edges of time itself. Time travel was the highest form of treason in their society and punishable by death.  It was a blatant violation of their religion...an edict sent down to the prophet Williams, that no man was to disrupt the natural order of time.  People throughout time had often wanted to travel there just to see what it was like. Those that did manage to puzzle out the galaxy's address in time usually disappeared never to be heard from again.

    "There is no such thing," she decided, then barked orders for furry creatures that guarded them to take them away to the cells.

    "Good going, John," Jason muttered at the man from behind bars.  John, Bertram and David stood across a dismal hallway in their own prison.  Ned, Jason, Jerry and Phillip stood in the other.  The girls were in a cell adjacent to them, but Jody was too busy consoling Catherine to pay attention to them.

    "That's not going to help," Phillip said, then he eyed John himself.  "Who are these people?"

    "You know your friend had no intention of bringing us back," John sniped in return, intent on avoiding the question that would inevitably lead to his admittance of what was sure to be their impending executions.

    "That's not true," Phillip said loudly.  "He was, and now we've left the restaurant...if he builds a storm..."

    "He's not going to build a storm," John shouted.

    "How do you know that?"  Phillip shouted back.  "You don't know Gerald!"

    John snorted in disgust, crossed his arms turned his back to the opposite cell.

    "You're going to have to tell them," Bertram muttered.  He stood up and walked to the bars so the entire group could clearly hear him.

    "We're in the Chromian Galaxy," Bertram said.  He then looked directly into Phillip's cool blue eyes with his own hard stare.  "Your Gerald sent us to a planet in a galaxy were time travel is expressly forbidden and has been so since the Holochrom Treaty: a treaty that gives the people of this planet permission to execute temporal trespassers."

    "How could they have a treaty if they can't even time travel?" Catherine sniffed.

    "Space travel, yes. They are present in intergalactic affairs, but concern themselves only with linear time.  Takes them years to send out diplomats.  Not many people come here though.  The address has been removed from the map.   Only the brightest minds can figure out what it is and only because they fancy themselves clever.  Some don't even believe it exists, or they don't want to believe it.  It's basically...what would they call it in their time?"

    "I believe that would be a cult," John replied glumly.

    "Yeah," Bertram spat bitterly.  "A legally recognized and sanctioned cult.  Do you understand now, Phil?"

    "Don't you ever, ever, ever call me that," Phillip replied.  He stared them down with an abject scowl on his face.  Any small hope that Gerald had ever had actual feelings for him or that Gerald would stick to the plan were quickly being extinguished.  The plan Phillip had been privy to was obviously not the real plan at all.

    "He sent us here to die," John said.  "And it's all your fault."

    David approached the bars from where he had been sitting and gripped them in his hands.  He lay his head against them and peered through the gap at Phillip, trying to comfort him from several feet away.  Phillip was thankful that at least someone had truly forgiven him.  Jason, Ned, and Jerry stood off to the side, trying their best to ignore the conversation.

    Any forgiveness that John had doled out was forgotten with the realization that he was probably going to die and might never regain use of his hand.

    "He's not worth it," he approached David and spoke harshly.  "He's in bed with the man who gave us a death sentence."

    David shook his head.  "Not anymore," he replied in a voice barely above a whisper.

    "You'd like to believe that," John leaned back and growled.  He set his eyes across the hallway on Phillip.

    "That's enough," Bertram spoke up from his vantage point.  "Don't do this, John.  It's bad enough..."

    "I believe him," David said a bit louder.

    "Ah, yes!" John paced a few steps behind him and stroked his chin ponderously with his good hand.  "He told you he's from the future, he told you that he was in on it, and he's told you that he's a mathematician, yes?"

    David nodded.  "And all that was true."

    "Right," John agreed.

    "John," Bertram spoke again, this time the warning was apparent in his voice.

    "Did he also tell you that he was a whore?"

    John said that loudly enough to pique the interests of the rest of the group.  Phillip blanched at their astonished stares.

    "Don't call him that!"  David shouted and spun around on John with fury in his eyes.  John took a step back then shrugged.

    "Ask him yourself."

    David tentatively turned back towards the other cell.

    "Is it true?" he asked.

    Phillip nodded miserably then asked John how he knew.

    "We had to make sure you are who you say you are," John replied.  "Bertram has the databases for all the inhabitable planets up until the 100th century uploaded into that nifty little gadget of his.  We scanned you while you were sleeping.  You're registered."

    "You said you don't work in the future division," Phillip snapped.  "You're not supposed to have access to that kind of future data."

    John shrugged.  "Bertram's smart enough in his own right.  It's not that hard to hack a database.  Right, Bertie?"

    Bertram only scowled angrily at his partner in return.

    "That's a violation of the intergalactic privacy act, article 342034!"  Phillip screamed at them.

    "So it is." John shrugged, ambivalent towards his own law breaking.  "And conjuring up temporal storms to transport unsuspecting kids from the past to a time and a place that expressly forbids time travel is perfectly on the up and up."

    It was then that Phillip lunged forward, his hands outstretched through the bars.  Finding that he could not reach John to strangle him and also that John had begun to laugh at him, he repeatedly threw himself up against the metal with no thought to his own safety.  It took Jerry and Jason both to subdue him, and they dragged him to the back wall of the cell and sat him down on the ground where he started to sob.

    Ned stood at the bars in a sort of dazed shock, looking back and forth between a defiant John Arker and Phillip, the future boy.  He finally settled a narrow eyed gaze on John and calmly pointed his own finger through the bars at him.

    "Not cool, man.  Not cool." he said, then joined his cell mates in their attempt to calm down Phillip.

    John turned back to his own cell mates in a huff.   He noted the glare of reproach on Bertram's face and the utter look of devastation on David's and he knew that he had let his emotions get the better of him.  He had crossed a line.

    "I'm sorry," he said.  It was a soft and sincere apology, but Bertram, for one, was not ready to forgive him.

    Bertram turned his back on John without a word and walked over to David.

    "Are you okay, kid?"  he asked.

    David nodded numbly.  It had been a shock for sure.  He knew that he didn't know Phillip at all.  They had only talked about their own planets and how much they had missed home.  He knew he had no reason to expect all of his friend's life story in one go for the simple fact that David liked him.  It wasn't fair.  Those kind of secrets only came with time.

    "Are you sure?"

    "Yeah." David nodded.  Then he looked at John, who stood in the opposite corner of the cell with his head bowed in shame.

    "It's alright, John."  He said.  "I was gonna find out sooner or later."

    John looked up, and nodded slightly, accepting David's words.

    Bertram sighed and patted the boy on the back.

    "You're a better man than I am," he said.


*****


   Catherine's tears had all dried up.  She and Jody sat with their backs against the bars of the adjacent cell where Ned and Jason also sat on the opposing side.

    "It's funny," Catherine said.

    "What?"  Jason muttered.  "Nothing about this is funny.  Did you not hear the part about execution?"

    "No, I mean...here we are millions of billions of years in the future and we are sitting in a jail cell."  She said.  "With metal bars and everything."

    "Well," Jason pondered.   "It's a simple and effective design solution for incarceration I guess."

    "We should escape," Ned suddenly spoke up as if he had only just decided that it was the most logical course of action.

    "How?" Jason asked.

    "Well, they let us keep our bottles," Ned pointed towards where the champagne bottles filled with water were piled in the corner of the room.

    "So?  What?"  Jody said.  "We should break the bottles and cut our wrists with them so we can just put an end to our misery?  I half think that's what those jerks want us to do anyway!"

    Jason and Ned eyed her curiously, but Ned shook his head.

    "I think we should get the guard drunk and steal his keys!"  he said.

    Jason rolled his eyes at his friend.  If there was something to be said about Ned, it wasn't that he was smart.

    "You know that those are filled with water, right?"

    "Correction," Ned said with a grin adorning his face.  "Yours are filled with water.  What makes you think good old Ned would really dispose of all that alcohol?"
    
    Jason laughed at his friend.  "Ned, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," he said.  "First of all, the guard is stationed outside.  Second of all, why the hell would he get drunk enough to be incapacitated.  If the bastard wasn't wearing a helmet I'd think it would be more effective to just bash him over the head."

    "You're right," Ned said solemnly, but he walked over the bottles anyway.

    "Come on Ned," Jerry said.  He was seated against the wall. Phillip had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder, and Jerry pretended not to notice David staring him down from across the room while he silently paced the length of the bars like a caged wildcat.

    "You know Catherine's right."
  
    "I know," Ned sighed.  He wished he had another joint on him.  Reality was such a downer.  "If we're going to die," he said.  "We can at least get drunk before we do."


*****



  Arwyn stood, framed by the doorway to her office, scratching the back of his head.  As he stared at the illegal tech strewn about the place, he wondered just what he had gotten himself into with the crazy lady.  He consoled himself that he would be able to turn her in if things got out of hand.  That was until she turned to him with a Time Travel Device firmly entrenched in her hand.

    "Hey, lady!"  He held his hands up as a symbol of dismay at having the TTD pointed at him.

    "Get that thing away from me."

    She glanced down at the mostly harmless bit of machinery.

    "Calm down, Anderson!"  She placed the device back on her desk and gave him an appraising look.  "What's wrong with you?  You're a Time Detective aren't you?"

    "In training," he replied, a bit embarrassed at his overreaction to the TTD.  "I'm still a cadet."

    "A ten year cadet."  She bit back the urge to laugh at him again.  She had done so on several occasions on the ride over and had watched as his face fell further and further until only a permanent frown of disappointment was left on it.  She hadn't meant to be cruel to the only person in the world who somehow believed her story.  She knew that there was no reason for him to.

    "Hey, I'm sorry."  She walked over to him and grabbed his hand to pull him into the room and then she sat him down at her cushiony office chair while she pulled out a folding chair from her closet and sat beside him.  To his surprise and unease she took up both his hands then and commanded him to look at her.  He did and found her smiling at him, her eyes clear and bright, and he trusted her.

    "What happened?" she asked.

    He shuddered as he thought about it.

    "It was only a prank," he muttered, and she groaned.  She knew about the pranks that had been played on her when she was merely a detective In training.

    "It shouldn't have affected me so much," he said.  "They used the remote control, kept sending me all over the time line.  Hah. hah.  I'd gotten a clean bill of health, but still..."

    "Time sickness?"  She wondered.

    "Yeah."  He smiled ruefully to himself.  "They wouldn't have kept doing it if I hadn't freaked out so much.  I should've gotten over it by now.  It's been ten years."

    "No amount of physicals can predict someone who is susceptible to time sickness...and if they kept time tripping you as a prank...It's not your fault."  She said.

    "I know," he replied.  He looked away from her then.  "But I could jump...I could take the pill."

    "Yeah," she agreed.

    "I'm just afraid."

    "That's okay," she consoled him.

    "They call me 'the baby'," he said sadly.  "It's just, I was sick for days.  It was awful.  I didn't know where I was, didn't know when I was, or who I was.  It was like I was drowning.  I couldn't breath.  The world winked in and out of existence every few minutes.  Now I'm just scared.  I can't advance any further than your average receptionist.  I'd leave the force if not for the benefits."

    "Come on," she replied, trying her best to cheer him up.  "Everybody loves being on the force.  It impresses people, right?"

    He looked up to face her cheerful grin.  His own face was creased into an sad frown.

    "Yeah, for a while...until they ask to hear about your great adventures in time and space...then you have to admit you're just a desk jockey."

    "And they don't have anybody you can talk to now?"  She asked.  Even though she could tell he wasn't keen on pity, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him.  It was a sad day indeed when a Time Detective couldn't face jumping through time.

    "What do you mean?"  He asked.

    "Well," she said.  "Back before the fissure..."

    "Alleged Fissure," he interrupted her.

    "Yes, alleged fissure," she corrected herself.  "Back before that we had councilors for the people who came down with time sickness.  It really seemed to help.  Almost all of them were able to jump again once they took the pill."

    "Sounds nice," he replied.  "Too bad..."

    "You're gonna have to get over it, because we're gonna track my partner down using my Time Travel Device.  It's directly linked to his."

    "What?"  He had calmed down a measurable amount and relaxed with his hands in hers, but the thought of traveling through time again caused him to snatch them back.  "I'm not jumping anywhere."

    "It'll be fine," she replied.  She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a blister pack of small red pills.

    "Why do you have those?" he asked incredulously.  "They only distribute those to people who..."

    "Yep," she tapped the pack on the edge of her desk and smiled kindly at him.  "They only give them to the people who need them.  People like me and you."

    Gerald was frustrated.  There was something wrong with the plan.  It wasn't going as he had expected it to.  He had adopted four griffins and they fluttered around his window, chirping loudly and gazing out at the golden sunsets.  He was having fun with the chimera, and his investments in the dismal fossil fuel industry were suddenly flourishing.  There had been four earthquakes across the planet that had toppled buildings and destroyed rival cities.  Clim-Port was in ruins, which Gerald found an unexpected but delightful side effect..  There were problems though.  There were new rules.  Unexpected rules.  He had almost been arrested four times for smoking marijuana cigarettes.  He wondered how a builder who had created new standards in building codes and earthquake proofing that had secured the safety of many a city that stood directly in the path of fault lines, a woman who had introduced stringent industry standards to genetic engineering, and the boy who had created the renewable source of clean burning fuel that crippled the fossil fuel industry could have changed  the universe against his favor.  To top it all off he had a sneaking suspicion that every day he came home his house seemed a little smaller and a little less glamorous.  They had stopped going to parties and people had stopped greeting him in the street as the son of a diplomat.  They barely glanced at him.

    It fully hit him when he came home day and couldn't find one of his computers.  At first it was a computer, then a time travel device.  Each and every day another of his possessions winked out of existence.  He cursed the plan.  He had been very careful not to choose anybody that had personally affected his own family history, but it was becoming apparent that something had gone very wrong.  He made back ups of all his data when it dawned on him and hid them in a time lock with his encyclopedia.  If what he feared was truly happening then he was going to need to fix the time line after all..


*****


    The occupants of cells 112 and 114 were drunk when the Royal Chromian camp was raided that night.  Ned, Jason, Jerry, and the girls had made good use of the two bottles of champagne that Ned had smuggled out of the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant.  Phillip had declined and sat at the front of the cell leaning forlornly against the bars and gazing at David, who sat in the cell opposite in much the same posture, an identical frown of dismay on his face.  Bertram and John stood on the opposite side of the cell playing games on the computer.

    The soldier that came to rescue them was not attired in the same way the ones from earlier in the day had been.  He was wearing a suit of chain mail covered with a bright blue cotton tunic adorned with the crest that displayed the figures of a unicorn and a griffin in battle.  He burst triumphantly through the door and removed his helmet,  letting his long silky blond hair fall free as he shook it out.

    "I have come to rescue you," he announced in order to make sure that his intentions were clear.

    Jody and Catherine burst into drunken laughter at his display.  Another, younger, soldier followed...this one much smaller, with several of the dread locked creatures chirping around his feet.

    He smiled at the girls then reached in to his own tunic, it was much more classically military, like something they had all seen in the history books about world war two, wooly and pocketed.  He pulled out a small metal tool from one of those pockets and easily sprung the lock on the cell.  The girls sprung on him in return and showered him with hugs and kisses much to the horror and dismay of the larger, more showy soldier.  Bertram was quickly at the bars of his cell upon seeing Jody fawning over the soldier.

    "Hey, come on, stop it!"  He complained and futilely reached out to try and stop them.  He only managed to swipe a bit at the larger soldier.  Having already been annoyed that his squire was getting more attention than he was the man grabbed Bertram from the wrist and yanked him roughly into bars.

    "Don't do that," the soldier muttered in a strange accent.

    Bertram squealed with sudden pain and rubbed his shoulder once the soldier released him.

    "I don't think that was called for," he mumbled and retreated further into the cell where John and David were watching curiously and a bit afraid.

    "Quite enough, don't you think, Dor?"  The young one spoke to the blond, then brushed past him to open the other two cells.  Dor harrumphed indignantly, but gave way to his squire anyway.  He was, after all, quite fond of the boy.  He would make a good knight one day with a little more experience.

    "What now?" John complained as he trudged dejectedly from the cell and stood slumped in front of the knight.  Bertram followed and stood behind him, while David stood next to him, fighting the urge to run directly over to the other cell where Phillip was still enclosed.  They were released in short order.  Ned had to be supported between a slightly less drunk Jason and Jerry.  They pitched back and forth like a ship on a stormy sea.

    Dor watched them curiously as they fell into a crooked line two by two with partnerless Jerry tailing along at the end.

    "What are you doing?"  Dor asked.

    "Uh," John pondered the question for a moment.  "Take us to your leader?"

    Dor's stare hardened.  "How do we know you're not spies planted in this prison?"

    "We've traveled in time," Bertram piped up much to John's chagrin.  He turned to face his partner and made rather obvious motions for him to shut-up.  Bertram only ignored him in favor of addressing Dor.

    "Would the Royal Chromian army really use time travelers as spies?"

    Dor paused to consider this then slowly shook his head.

    "It would be clever."

    "Come on," Bertram said, his voice taking on an almost begging tone.

    "They are clever," Dor continued.  "But I think they probably hate you too much to use you.  Hate clouds their judgment most of the time."

    "Exactly!" Bertram nodded and then grinned triumphantly at John.

    "Well, okay," Dor said.  "It is day's journey from here on horny horse."

    "What did you say?"  Ned perked up, his interest suddenly aroused by the hilarity of the words that had just escaped the knight's mouth.

    "I said okay,"  Dor replied, a bit confused.

    "No, I mean the part about the horny horses," Ned sputtered.  He was unable to contain the uproarious laughter that had built up inside him, and Jason, Jerry, and the girls joined him shortly in his drunken revelry.

    "Guys," John turned impatiently towards the group.  "Are you twelve?  He means the unicorns."

   Ned pointed at him.  "You said unicorns!"  He squealed with delighted laughter.

    "Christ." John hung his head, fully embarrassed to be in charge of that particular group of twenty first century humans.

    Dor scratched at his flowing blond chin beard and turned to his squire.

    "Primitive race, yes, Dale?"

    Dale nodded as he stood at attention, wishing that he could let loose in such a way every once in a while.  There was no slacking off in the life of a squire though.  He was there to prove himself and make it into the new knighthood.

    "Okay, that's enough," John turned and commanded his group's attentions.  "Partner up.  Phillip, you're with us."

    Phillip, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since John had revealed his secret past, only shook his head.

    Jody scooted past John and grabbed hold of a rather surprised Bertram's arm.

    "Jody."  He gave her a gentle warning and tried to delicately push her away, but it caused her to not only hold on tight, but to lay her head against his shoulder.  He looked helplessly at John who was smiling encouragingly at him.  Bertram frowned.  It was against the rules.  He wondered how he had landed such a reckless partner.  He chuckled to himself after a moment.  John may have leaped more often than he looked, but here Bertram was, on a blue sun planet in a place that nobody had escaped from alive before.  It was scary, and he had no idea what lay in store for their little band of humans from the past.  For all he knew the kid and the muscle-bound knight could take them out into the woods and hang them, thereby cutting out the middleman of a public execution, but it didn't matter.  It was thrilling.  He hadn't felt so alive as he did in that moment.

    He pulled his arm out from Jody's grasp and wrapped it around her shoulder bringing her in closer.  She closed her eyes and sighed contentedly, and John gave him a thumbs up sign.

   John then marched to the rear of the line and took up with Jerry and they both took up the task of holding Ned in an upright position.  Jason smiled at Catherine, pointed at her then himself and mouthed  'You? Me?' at her with a smile.  She nodded happily and trotted up to him, greeting him with a kiss on the cheek.

    Phillip and David were left alone.  They stood shoulder to shoulder in silence.  David stared straight ahead as the others situated themselves in a line behind the Knight and the other soldier, who looked on approvingly.  Phillip chewed his lip and looked contemplatively up at his partner.  He let his arms drop from where they had been hugged tightly to his chest and let his hand dangle near David's.  David didn't immediately ward off his advances, so Phillip brushed a finger against the back of David's hand.  At that point David grunted, frowned, and took a step away, all the while keeping his eyes up front.  Phillip sighed dejectedly as they began to march forward and out of the prison.

    The knight led them to a nearby clearing where they were greeted with their own horny horses.

    The creatures that had been following behind them climbed up onto their own horse.  Ten of them piled on top of one another in a colorful mountain of dreadlocks.

    Catherine eyed her unicorn up and down.  It was smaller than the others and sported a patchwork of white and brown.

    "It's a pinto," she said to nobody in particular.

    Dale approached her as he was attending to the group, making sure they were all situated correctly on their mounts.  He patted her shoulder in a friendly manner.

    "Pinto?" he asked.

    "Well, where...when I come from that's what they would call this kind of horse with the patches.  I didn't know unicorns came in pinto colors."

    Dale chuckled kindly at her, and she smiled nervously in return.

    "It's just a  horse," he said.  "These horns are genetic grafts.  We wouldn't do it if the Royal Army didn't.  We had a lot of casualties when they first started engineering horny horses.  Human and Animal alike.  The horns are very sharp at the point and dangerous.  We had to protect ourselves.  Level the playing field."

    "So you're not with the other guys?" Catherine wondered.  "I thought you were like, rogue or something."

    "Nah." Dale shook his head.  "There were a few people that don't believe in the Prophet Williams principals.  The Royal family didn't like that, so we split off from the group...it sort of gained momentum and we've had more and more people join the rebellion as the years go by."

    "Wow," she marveled.  "So it's like civil war?"

    "Exactly," Dale agreed with a sigh.  "It's been going on for too long.  All we want really is to live in peace and be able to import the teleportation and time travel technologies that are available.  You know, to be a technologically advanced society and have those basic fundamental tools unavailable because a few people think it's wrong...  Perhaps the queen is afraid that once her subjects get a sight at the outside world then they won't want to live here anymore."

    "Yeah," Catherine nodded, then she laughed to herself.  "Basic technologies.  That's funny.  Where we come from this stuff is only fodder for fiction and theories."
    
    "I knew you were from the past!" He said excitedly as he eyed her clothes.  She nodded sheepishly.

    "Come on," Dale said.  "Let's get you up on that horse.  I'm supposed to be making sure everybody's okay, not standing around chatting."

    "But chatting is fun," Catherine replied.  "You're nice."

    "Thank you," Dale replied.  He told Catherine to stay put and returned to her with a saddle in hand.

    "Do you have to saddle all these horses by yourself?" She asked him.

    Dale nodded.  For that moment it was his lot in life to do Dor's bidding, while Dor sat on his on splendid black stallion that was covered in armor and its own tunic with the crest of the rebellion on it.  He watched over the proceedings with a satisfied grin on his face.  He surely would get a medal for such great do gooding. 
    
    "Well, I can help..."

    "Have you saddled a horse before?"  Dale asked.

    She shook her head to the negative.  She hadn't thought much about horses at all living in Southern California.

    "Well, it's tricky.  Sometimes they hold their breath so you can't tighten the girth.  Especially this old girl."  He patted the pinto fondly on the neck and she whinnied and shook her mane at him.

    Catherine laughed.  "Seriously?"

    "Yeah," Dale replied.  "This one doesn't particularly like to be bridled either.  She's a sweetheart, but a bit stubborn."

    From a few feet away Jason stood next to Ned and Jerry with a scowl on his face.

    "What are they talking about?"  He sniped.  "Cath is my partner now!"

     "You're jealous?"  Jerry wondered out loud.

    Jason fumed to himself and didn't bother answering because he knew that Jerry was right.  Catherine had only just started paying extra attention to him and he was beginning to enjoy her company.  She was a little quiet and a little shy and a little bit bookish...a little bit not his type, but she was sweet.  He could use a little sweet in his life, especially when no girls at all ever bothered to give him the time of day.

    "Maybe a little," he said.  "I mean...What is it that these future guys have that I don't have?"

    Jerry didn't say anything and that encouraged Jason to continue his ranting.

    "I mean...even Jody.  Look at her fawning all over that detective guy!"   He pointed to where she was still clinging to Bertram.  "And then David can't even stay away from the dude that put us on this weird ass planet...that is not Earth, Jerry.  We're not even on Earth!  To top it all off the guy is a whore.  Still...he's mister irresistible."

    "They don't seem to be getting along right now," Jerry pointed out.  Phillip and David stood off to the side, stiff in posture with their arms crossed, both staring straight ahead off into space awaiting further instruction.

    "Now, Cath..."  Jason turned his attentions back to complaining about his former partner.  "She's now got the hots for the...jesus, Jerry, am I that hideous?"

    "What do you mean?"  Jerry eyed him curiously.

    "She goes for the underling, Jerry!  She doesn't even go for the one that looks like Fabio!"  He swiped a hand gesture towards Dor, who sat upon his steed, tossing his golden locks in the air, the blue light glinting brilliantly off his shiny tresses.

    Jerry chortled at his companion's most accurate description of Dor, then patted him sympathetically on the back.

    "You're luck you're married.  You don't have to worry about this shit."  Jason muttered

    "Oh, please." Jerry shook his head.  His amusement quickly turned sour as he thought of the mother thing and her equally atrocious family back at Knott's Berry Farm.  Truth be told he was happy that he had been stolen from time.  If he ever got back he knew that things were over between he and Esther.  He had been through far too much to ever be satisfied with that kind of life again.  Here, on the blue sun planet with his fellow abductees, he was at least given a modicum of respect.  He would even go so far as to say that maybe the kids even liked him a little bit.

    "What?"  Jason asked.

    "If we ever find any future women," Jerry decided.  "I am so tappin' that future ass, I tell you what."

    Jason gaped at the older man's turn of phrase then burst into his own grin.

    "Right on my brother!"  He offered a high five and Jerry reciprocated. 

    "There's like, no women in the future," Jason pointed out.  "We've just met a bunch of weird chirpy hairballs with eyes and legs and these two jokers a bunch of...what that dude call them?"

    "Soldiers of the Royal Army?"  Jerry supplied, unsure that he had heard Dor correctly when he'd muttered the title to himself earlier.  "There was that one chick."

    "General Hard Ass?"  Jason asked with the nick name he had given to her in his mind.  This caused Jerry to laugh again.

    "Yeah, that one," he said.

    "I'm so not going there," Jason replied.  "Sentencing me to death row is kind of a turn off."

    "Yep," said Jerry.  There was no disagreeing with that.

     It took Dale an hour to saddle all the horny horses required to transport the guests of the Rebel Army.  He eventually managed it though.  Since they had arrived, the clearing had filled with many more troops wearing similar knight like attire as Dor was.  They each had their own squires with woolen tunics, who rode behind them carrying their swords and looking hopeful that their patron would notice them and praise them.  It was one step on the path knighthood.  Most of them would have never had a hope of making it that far had they joined up with the Royal Army.  Besides that, time travel and teleportation were exciting prospects.

    Once Dor was seemingly satisfied that everything was settled, prisoners had been locked up in metal coaches much like the one the Royal Army had treated the time travelers to, and that all of his own troops were present and accounted for, he trotted his own horny horse up to the edge of the clearing where a small path led. 

    "Onward!"  He shouted, trumpeters on either side of him sounded out with a triumphant squeal and he led his army through the gap in the trees.

     Bertram had been wondering why they were traveling by horse when the planet obviously had the technology to use fossil fuels.  He would have asked one of the knights about it, but they rode, two by two, knight and squire, looking purposefully ahead.  Perhaps they still used wheels, Bertram thought.  No vehicle with wheels would have ever been able to traverse a foot path such as the one that they were on.  Jody was beside him, having trouble with her horse, and bouncing around in her saddle where everybody else had settled into the easy dawdling pace of the walk.  Her bouncing was agitating the creature who swung his head back and forth, occasionally clinking horns with Bertram's horse.  Then it would huff and dance sideways before settling down only to repeat the procedure over and over again.  Jody became increasingly frightened and only limply held on to the reins.

    "Are you okay, Jody?"  Bertram asked her.  She only shook her head and moaned in frustration.

   They came to a break in the woods then.  The group streamed out of the trees and were greeted by a wide open field covered in what could have been a golden colored grass.  It was hard to tell because of the slight bluish tint that the sun gave everything.  The time travelers were pleased that the thickest of the woods seemed to be past them.  They could see mountains far off on the horizon, the sun loomed low in the sky.

    It was then that a horny horse piled with creatures began galloping up from the hind end of the line.  They chirped pleasantly and playfully as their horse rode by.  They owed their lives to the strong knight leader, Dor, but they were happy to be free.  As they rode on, the one with the blue dread locks reached out and lightly slapped the shoulders of the other riders he was passing by.  He only wanted to share in his glee.  He hadn't meant any harm.

    The slap surprised Jody.  She gasped, yanked on the reins and dug he heels into the sides of the already skittish horny horse.  It instantly reared up and tried to buck her off its back, but she clung desperately to its neck and that was where she stayed as it took off across the field.  Bertram had little time to react and he tried to spur his own horse into action, but it only shook its head stubbornly and tried to sit down.  He ended up sliding backwards out of the saddle and into the tall grass.  He almost didn't notice two riders fly past him, nearly running him over in the process.

    "Fall off!" Phillip was shouting as best he could at Jody as they galloped at breakneck speed through the grass.  Several of the squires, John, and Jerry had also taken off after them, but they were far behind having gotten a later start.

    Jody did not have the good sense to let go of the horse and end her terrifying ride, and Phillip's shouted instructions could not be heard above the sound of thundering hooves bearing down on her.  The sense of being chased did not help to ease the spooked horse, and it only seemed to run faster in an attempt to escape.  The horse did, however, have enough sense to stop short when the grass ended and the unseen canyon began.  It skittered to a sudden halt kicking up a cloud of dust as it did so.  Jody was unable to hang on then.  She flew over the horse's bowed neck, barely missing being impaled by its horn, and slid a few feet.  She teetered on the edge of the cliff for a moment, but couldn't hold on and toppled over the edge.

    Phillip arrived first on the scene.  He practically jumped off the horse mid-stride and ran to the edge.  David followed quickly after and joined him, looking down at the river that wound through the canyon It must have been several miles below their feet.  Jody had landed on a small outcropping of rock a few feet below the lip of the crevice. 

    "Oh, thank god," David gasped.

    "I can reach her," Phillip said.  "Lower me down."

    "The others..."

    "Listen," Phillip grabbed David by his shoulders and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

    David could barely hear him for the sound of his own beating heart.

    "That ledge isn't going to hold.  Lower me down.  I'd offer to do the lowering, but I don't think I could support your weight."  He had seen the almost imperceptible crack in the ledge.  Jody wasn't going to be able to last long enough to search out a rope.  Phillip grabbed David's hands and placed them around his waist. 

    "Just don't let me fall," Phillip whispered one last instruction in his ear then led him backwards towards the ledge.

    David could do nothing but follow along with Phillip's plan.  His brain seemed to have stopped functioning completely as he was faced with the life and death situation.  He could barely hear Jody calling for help.

    Jody herself almost didn't register Phillip calling out to her from the ledge himself after a moment.  She glanced up at him, clearly terrified.

    "Okay," Phillip said once she had noticed him.  "You're gonna need to stand up...slowly."

    "I can't," she said, her voice wavering in fear.  "I think I hurt my foot."

    Phillip turned to David.  "You're going to have to lower me down by the ankles."

    "Are you kidding me?"  David hissed.  It was one thing to only have the upper half of ones body dangling over the edge of a precipice, but to be dangling from one's ankles was another thing entirely.

    "Just do it," Phillip replied.  "The crack is getting wider...if she notices she's going to freak out..."

    Phillip reappeared to her then, smiling assuredly. 

    "David's going to lower me down," he said.  "I want you to reach out and grab my hands and we'll pull you up.  It's gonna be okay, alright?  On three?"

    Jody nodded, and Phillip counted off.

    The procedure went off exactly according to plan.   As soon as Phillips fingertips were within her reach from her seated position, Jody grabbed hold of his hands.  On his mark, David slowly dragged him back up on to level ground.  He moved his grasp from Phillip's ankles to his waist as soon as he was in a more stable position.  From there, David was able to lift them both to safety.  He was thankful for his part time landscaping job in that moment.  And his father thought lifting paving stones on a regular basis never did anybody any good.

    As soon as Jody could she scrambled away from Phillip's grasp and hobbled a few feet away only to be greeted with the entire Rebel scouting party on horseback. 

    "It's okay," she waved and smiled brightly at them.  They looked on skeptically as she hobbled back towards the boys who had rescued her.

    Phillip's heart was hammering in his chest.  His back was to David, but only because his partner had a vice grip on his hips, hard enough to cause discomfort, and he showed no signs of letting go.

    "David?  Can you?"  Phillip pushed futilely at David's hands.  "You're kind of hurting me."

    David only let go long enough to turn Phillip around to face him though.  As soon as their eyes met, Phillip, in what he would only moments later chalk up to adrenaline fueled insanity, reached up, pulled David's lips to his and kissed him hard.  It was only then that David's hands released their grip.  He was unsure of what to do with them, but eventually decided to reach up, cradle Phillip's head in a reciprocal gesture and...kiss him back.  That bliss only lasted for a moment, however.  David, as if a switch had been turned on in his brain, broke the embrace and pushed Phillip away harshly.

    "Why did you do have to do that?" he screamed at him.

    "Well, you didn't seem to mind!"  Phillip screamed right back.

    "Fuck this!" David shook his head harshly and swiped his hand through the air in a dismissive gesture before stalking angrily away.

    He stood there looking heartbroken.  He wanted to go to David, who hadn't made it that far, being stopped by a wall of Rebel soldiers headed by Dor himself.  He wanted to apologize.  He wanted to make things right.

  So Phillip took one step forward and was immediately greeted by Jody, who collapsed into his arms, shaking like a leaf.  He could do nothing but hold her as she sobbed out thank yous for saving her life.

*****

 They both received a sound dressing down from Dor for their reckless, yet effective attempt at a rescue later on that evening.  Phillip stood tall during the lecture about how the army carried ropes for just such occasions and how they were far safer for everybody involved.  When Phillip naturally protested due to the time and unstable outcropping issues, Dor simply told him that they could have unclipped the horse's reins from the bit and used those instead of putting his own life and David's life in danger. 

  Phillip was then suitably humbled, because he hadn't thought of it himself and Dor was right.  He was young and inexperienced in other worldy adventures, and he was a mathematician at heart.  Math afforded him all the time in the world.  Equations were always there waiting to be solved, and theorems waiting to be proven.  As it turned out making split second decisions on how to save a life was not something he was particularly good at.  He made no more attempts to justify his decision, not even the fact that nobody had actually died.  It didn't change the fact that he had once again endangered the people he wanted to call friends.

    David was there too.  He stood, tight lipped in the corner with a scowl on his face.  They were eventually allowed to return to their group and Phillip tried to apologize, but David was intent on ignoring him until they came within sight of the others.  They sat in a circle that had been cleared in the grass, quietly chatting with one another.  Bertram was pacing back and forth waiting for Jody to return from the field medic.

    "I knew I should never have listened to your dumb idea," David spoke up.

    "I'm sorry," Phillip replied morosely.  He had been saying it at an ever increasing frequency as they had walked along, but it was having no impact on David.

    "Look, we're switching partners," David said as he stared at the ground.

    "Wha...what?  Why?"  Phillip sputtered.  "Because I kissed you?"

    "My reasons are my reasons," David muttered.  "You're with John now, and I'm with Jerry and Cath, and Ned's with Jason again."

    "Like that doesn't sound homosexual," Phillip rolled his eyes.

    "We're done," David replied.  He walked away then.

    Phillip had thought his life could never have gotten more disastrous after he'd dropped out of school and became a rent boy, but, as recent events had proven...once the bottom of the barrel had been hit, there was always the chance of there being another barrel waiting.

*****

    They had decided to make camp at their location.  Jody had been dismayed to have to stay anywhere near the canyon and became even more upset when she was informed that their path of travel was along side it, followed  by a steep decent into it on a path only wide enough  for the carts to pass.  She had returned to Bertram's side with crutches and her ankle in wrapped and splinted.

    "Is it broken?"  He asked.

    She shook her head at him.

    "It's only sprained."

    He then led her away from the group to where a tent had been set up.

    "One for each of us," he said.
    
    "Oh?"  She sounded disappointed at that.

    "Well, for each...uh partnership. I've set you up with Catherine for tonight."  He looked upon her, pleased that he had been able to arrange it.  Ned and Jason were happy to partner up again, and finally David and Phillip had split on their own and were not insisting on staying together.  The Time Detective felt a bit more at ease knowing that the mathematician was safe in custody rather than riding around attempting ill advised rescues.  Still, he was grateful that Jody was okay.

    "I don't want to be with Cath," Jody pouted at him.  "I want to stay with you."

    "You know we can't do that," Bertram replied.  "It's against the rules."

    "Yeah," Jody said disappointedly.  "You and your rules.  Are you making me go to bed now?"

    "Aren't you tired?"  He cocked his head curiously at her.

    "Not if it means I'm not going to see you for a while."  She glanced up at him shyly from where she was balanced precariously on her crutches.

    "Jody," he sighed at her.  "Wait right here."

    He was gone a long time, and Jody was just beginning he'd ditched her in front of the tent she had been ordered to spend the night in with Catherine.  He hadn't.  He returned to her with a cot in hand and set it outside the tent flap, then sat her down upon it and offered her a canteen.

    "It's water.  Can't have you getting drunk again, can we?"

    "Ugh, no." Jody frowned.  "You don't happen to have magical hangover cures in the future."

    "Unfortunately not," Bertram spat bitterly.  He sat down down beside her.  "People in the future are still as self destructive and stupid as they are in your time.  There are new rules, but there are new drugs...and the old ones never go away, even though we'd love to have a hangover pill, I'm sure.  Always the easy way out, the human race."

    "Are you okay?" She asked and ran a comforting hand down his arm.  He shivered.

    "Yeah," he said.  "My dad..."   He left the sentence go unfinished.  His dad was a drunk who had abandoned his mother and him.  It wasn't information he'd freely traded with strangers...or friends for that matter.  Not that he had many friends.  John was the only one he could truly count on and that was only because they were partners.  He had no idea if John thought of him in a friendly manner at all.  They never discussed their personal affairs, and if John did happen to ask, Bertram made well sure that he had his nose buried in his computer pretending to be busily working a case.  Maybe, he thought, he was afraid of friendship of any kind.  Relationships were out of the question.  Jody's sudden attentions had been unexpected and unwanted at first, but he was warming to the idea.  And he knew it was wrong, because they were from different times.  She had to return to hers, and he to his.

     "I'm sorry, Bertram," she said in reply. "My mom is sick," she said, feeling as if she had to share something of herself with him as well.  "She has Alzheimer's, and she's going downhill fast.  I know Phillip said that you can put us back right when we left, but I can't help but worry.  She can't really function on her own.  Keeps forgetting things, y'know.  Do they have a cure for that in the future?"  She looked up at him hopefully, but he only shook his head. 

    There wasn't, but he knew that if there was he wouldn't be able to give it to her; not even for one person.  It was a shame, but those were the rules.  They couldn't swoop in to the past and save everybody, so they weren't allowed to save anybody.  That was his job.  That was why he had become a Time Cop.  It wasn't fair, he knew, but life rarely was.  The road to hell was paved with good intentions after all.  Unleashing a cure for something several years before it would be invented could cause untold chaos in time.  Who knew what displacing only five people in time had done.  His computer showed that time was still rippling the after affects of the fissure. It was growing out all over the place in directions it shouldn't have been.  The damage that would be caused by millions of people being cured and living their lives would be catastrophic.

    "You're a sweet guy, you know that, Bertram?"  She said, and she leaned against him, looking up at the sun.  It was slowly starting to make it's way towards the horizon.  It would be dark again in a few hours.

    He shrugged at her. 

    "It's better to be nice than...well, than to be John, I guess.  I mean, he's not bad.  Just a little brash, but...I dunno.  I like being shy.  It suits me."

    "I think so," she agreed. "Do you think we'll ever get home?"

    Bertram nodded solemnly and reassuringly squeezed her shoulder.  "Absolutely," he said with conviction, though he wasn't sure at all.

It was another long day.  Literally.  Chromia's rotation was twice as long as Earth's.  Each day was a full forty-eight hours.  The Chromian rebels were used to it and had no problems using the full day's light for travel without tiring.  They were being slowed down by the 21st Century Earthlings, as they liked to call themselves, who could not seem to go more than twelve hours without making exaggerated yawning noises or falling asleep in the saddle.  Falling asleep in the saddle was a dangerous thing, so they made many stops for naps and sustenance.  Luckily, the scouts made no reports of the Royal Chromian Army tailing them.

    The raiding party had left their camp in a shambles after all.  The "General Hard Ass" had been captured and the troops were left to fend for themselves without a strong leader.  The rebels were lucky.  All their raids had not proven to be such a success.  They had lost people to the cause along the way.  It was going to be a long fight.  The queen had many resources at her side. 

They spent the day traveling along the canyon to the point at which the path of descent began.  They decided to stop there for the night, and Jody was thankful.  She was more than little bit frightened at the prospect of traveling down into the depths that she had almost fallen into.  Thankfully they hadn't made her ride the horny horse again.  Dale had commandeered her to one of the prison coaches where she rode up font in the passengers seat next to him.

    She made a show of leaning against the squire and his scratchy woolen uniform, talking in his ear and rubbing his arm suggestively.  She had shared a moment with Bertram the night before, that much was true, but she was still a bit irritated with him for making her spend the night with Catherine.  She liked Catherine; she wasn't going to deny that.  Aside from the General she was the only girl there, but Catherine had started in on the events of the day as soon as Jody had hobbled into their tent.  She talked about how scared she had been when Jody had taken off and they discovered she had fallen over the edge of the cliff, and she talked about how brave Phillip and David were.  And she talked about that damned kiss with a disappointed half smile on her face, and asked Jody how she got all the boys to like her.

    Jody hadn't wanted to talk about any of it.  She wanted to curl up on her cot under the woolen blankets and sleep the stress and horror of the day away.  Catherine just wouldn't leave her alone though.  So she was angry with Bertram for ditching her when she could have spent what she envisioned as a much more pleasant evening with him, and she was intent on making him jealous as she was well aware that he was keeping his eye on her as he rode alongside John and Phillip directly behind the cart.

    As Bertram was preoccupied with matters of the heart it fell to John to keep an eye on Phillip, who was riding in between them and distractedly tying to look backwards at David.  David, who was content to ignore him and chat with Jerry about anything except for Phillip.  Jerry was more than happy to oblige.  He talked about his contracting business and David told him about his landscaping dream, which had hardly been a dream only a few days previously, but only the germ of an idea to expand his job into something a little more lucrative to help contribute to the family.

    "When we get back..." Jerry ventured.  "I could hire you!"

    "I thought you lived back East?" David replied.  He laughed at Jerry, who seemed to have forgotten that he had his vacation stolen out from under him.

    "Right," Jerry said thoughtfully.  "Going anywhere with the Mother Thing is never like a vacation.  It's easy for me to forget sometimes."

    "The Mother Thing?"  David asked with an amused expression on his face. 

    "Yeah," Jerry chuckled to himself.  "There was this character in this sci-fi novel..."  he trailed off and looked at the blue sun.  "And now I'M in a sci-fi novel!  In any case, that's my wife Esther.  She's a horrible beast pretty much.  I've been asking myself for years why I'm still with the woman, but...I guess it's the kids.  I don't want to leave them with her should we divorce."  He was sad then.  He had barely thought of them in the excitement of the abduction through time and their capture at the hands of an army and subsequent rescue.  He did love his children, and despite Esther's shrillness, he knew they were in good hands. He just didn't want her to turn them against him should they part...on inevitably bad terms.

    "That's too bad," David replied.

    "Yeah,"  Jerry agreed.  "Only goes to prove that you should wait until you find the right person.  You know, instead of marrying the first gigantic loud mouthed woman that lands on your doorstep."

    David chuckled.  "She just showed up on your doorstep, huh?"

    "Pretty much," Jerry replied. 

    "At least you have somebody," David replied.  He looked down at his hands holding the reins of the horny horse.  "I'm too busy worrying about supporting the family...and my sister.  Always with the wrong crowd that one.  I don't know what I'm going to do with her."

    "I think you do have somebody," Jerry said knowingly and nodded towards the line where Phillip was none too subtly twisting around in his saddle trying to catch David's eye.

    "Him?"  David scoffed indignantly.  "Please."

    "Well, I'm no expert in relationships," Jerry said with a chuckle.  "I mean look at mine, it's pretty much in shambles.  There is one thing I do know, so think about it carefully."

    David frowned wondering what on earth Jerry could have to say that was relevant to the situation.  He was certain that it was nothing, so he nodded permission for the older man to continue.

    "Okay." Jerry nodded.  "So, my eyes are as good as anybody's and I know they aren't deceiving me...now, don't get mad..."

    "I'm not going to get mad," David replied, impatient for Jerry to get on with it and impart his great wisdom.

    "You...kissed him back."

    David hunched in his saddle, the curious yet annoyed expression he had been wearing turned into a scowl.

    "You don't know anything about it, Jerry," he finally said.  "and it's definitely none of your business."

    "I know," Jerry conceded.  "Just think about it."

    David contemplated kicking his horse into gear and trotting up to the front of the line, but thought better of it.  That was what the creatures had done the day before and they had all seen what had happened then.  The things were relegated to trotting along after the troop at the end of the line.  Their chirps had taken on a mournful apologetic tone and they were happy to trail along behind, carefully being watched by a group of squires.   They hadn't meant to hurt any of their new masters.

*****

   Dale was making a camp fire when he suddenly found himself flanked by Catherine and Jody.  Catherine plopped directly down on the ground next to him, Jody was having trouble with her crutches so he abandoned his futile stick rubbing and stood to help her into a seated position.  One of the creatures sat opposite them, its red hair concealing its arms and legs.  It looked like a giant ball of hair with googly eyes.

    "Here," Catherine handed him two rocks when he returned to the task at hand.

    "What is that?"  He asked curiously.  "Let me guess...some kind of ritual where you come from..."

    "No, Dale," she said.  "It's flint."

    He stared at her blankly.

    "Here," she crawled up from her reclining position and gathered up the tinder in the center of the wood pile.  Sparking the two stones together she managed to ignite the pile of dry grass and twigs and leaves, much to Dale's amazement.

    "You always keep flint in your pocket?"  Jody asked with a bright smile.

    "Nah, I found it in the woods a few days ago," she said.  "I study geology a lot.   I thought it was pretty cool to find alien rocks, but then I looked at it closer.  All this time and all this distance away from home and it's plain old flint."

    "Why'd you keep it?" Dale asked.  "If it's so ordinary."

    "I don't know," Catherine replied.  "I guess...well, it's still alien.  It's not going to alter the path of human history if I take it home is it?"

    "I don't know," it was Dale's turn to reply.  "We haven't had the chance to study time travel here...its history, the hows and the whys of how things are effected by it.  That's what we want.  We try to smuggle some stuff in, but  it's hard."

    "Well, we don't either," Jody said.  "We don't have it in our time.  We kind of got stolen by some evil future villain who wanted to change time.  Apparently, we're very important people..."

    "And that changes things?" Dale pondered.  "Interesting.  Maybe it's not such a good idea."

    "I think that's why they have cops," Catherine pointed towards Bertram.  Jody sighed at the thought of him.  "To protect time."

    Dale nodded.  He threw another log on the fire.  "That's interesting," he said.  "I can't wait to learn more!"

    "Yeah!" Catherine nodded enthusiastically at the thought of learning.  "This trip has been the most educational thing that has ever happened to me...including my education!"  She laughed heartily.  "I'm going to feel really bad putting a stop to horny horses when we get back though."

    "You sound like you're enjoying this," Jody said.  She had lost a bit of her cheer.  She wished she could find a little bit of joy in the situation herself.

    "I am," Catherine agreed.  "Is that wrong?  I fully believe Bertram and Phillip will get us back.  Between them...they're like the smartest guys I have ever met.  Didn't you see what Phillip did to that computer?  He reprogrammed it in seconds! It was amazing!"

    "Yeah," Jody had to agree with that, though she hadn't had much experience in dealing with technically smart men.  The only men she really talked to on a daily basis were Ned, an admitted stoner, and Jason, a total dreamer.

    "But maybe," Jody postulated.  "Maybe they're just average smart for their time?"

      "Oh, please!" Catherine tossed her head and rolled her eyes. 

    "Why not?"  Jody asked. 

    "You've met John Arker, right?"  She replied with a smirk.

    Jody giggled  "Point taken," she said.

    Dale had watched the entire conversation unfold with fascination.  He hadn't had occasion to meet anybody from another planet...space travel was expensive and time consuming.  It took years for delegates to fly to conferences that were only a few star systems away.  When he had lived under royal rule that definitely wasn't an option for someone in his station in life.  To meet two girls from another time was just the icing on the cake of such a successful raiding party. 

  The sun was still up, setting slowly, but he had gotten the fire roaring before the light winked out burying them in complete darkness.  Dale retreated to the edge of the ring of fire and sat down beside the creature.  Jody shuddered.  As Catherine took a moment to throw a comforting arm around her friend she asked the squire what exactly the creature was.

    "Is it some kind of alien?"  she asked.

    "This little guy?"  Dale patted its head and it made its peculiar little chirp at him.  "He's not the alien.  He was here long before the humans were.  At least that's what the Royal Chromian history books have told us.  Who knows if they're actually true or just another lie they tell us so we just keep going along with their rules."

    The girls listened in rapt attention.

    "You see," Dale continued.  "The Chromians use these poor creatures as slaves.  The ones you ran across...they captured you I presume?"  Catherine and Jody nodded.  "Yeah, well those were scouts.  The army uses them as an advanced guard so they don't have to get their "real" soldiers killed."

    "That's terrible," Jody spoke up.  "But they didn't seem to mind."

   "Disobeying the Royal Army is not an option," Dale spoke bitterly.  "There was a massacre...the Quickling massacre. They wiped out almost the entire wild population."

    "Is that what it is?"  Catherine asked.  "A Quickling?"

    "That's what we call them anyway," Dale replied.  "Yeah.  The ones you see here were bred in captivity.  They don't know any more than the lives their masters have given them.  One of these guys wouldn't last a day out in the wild."

    "Why not?"  Catherine asked.  "We haven't come across and scary wildlife yet."

    "Only cliffs," Jody contributed with a frown.

    "Yet," Dale pointed out to them.  "There's plenty of things that come out at night and, well, traveling through the Needles is not a piece of cake.  Not to mention the mud flats and...you get the point.  The woods is the least of a Quickling's worries.  These," he patted the red one on the head.  "These ones that we've set free don't even know how to be free.  They've been following along.  They think we're their masters now, so we give them tasks and let them live in our cities and woods.  It keeps them safe, and they seem happy."

    "Those ones yesterday...that scared Jody's horse..." Catherine started, but Jody elbowed her harshly in the ribs. 

    "Yeah, they like to play.  You think the Royal Army let's a Quickling ride on their horny horses?  Nah.  They were happy they didn't have to walk.  They're called Quicklings...they're pretty fast on foot, but we'd been riding several miles by then.  They'd been free from the Royal Army.  They were just excited. Jody, I'm sorry.  They don't know any better.  They're like little kids sometimes."

    "Okay." Jody nodded.  She still eyed the thing suspiciously. 

    Dale noted her discomfort and smiled at her.  He stood up from his seat and walked over to sit next to her then urged the Quickling to follow.  It unfolded its spindly black legs and bounced over to him, sitting down at his feet.  It looked up at him with its buggy eyes and cooed softly. 

    "This one won't leave me alone," Dale sighed.  "I think she's adopted me."  He pulled a small bit of food out from a pouch on his belt and held it out to the Quickling. It revealed its arms and snatched the object from his hand, shoving it into the thick pile of hair, presumably into its mouth.

    "Try it."  He offered Jody another piece of food from his pouch.  She reluctantly took it.  It was a thin slice of potato.  It had been crisp once upon a time but had since fallen limp due to being stashed in Dale's pouch.

    "Is this a french fry?"  She asked as she took it.

    "Well, I don't know what that is, but we call it 'hot oiled ground foods'.  Easily cultivated outside of our city, good food for the troops.  You can cook them lots of ways."

    "It's a french fry," Catherine decided.

    Jody regarded it for a moment then held it out to the Quickling.  The creature chirped at her and cocked it's head, then accepted the treat.  It then unexpectedly jumped into her lap and wrapped its arms around her.

    Jody stiffened at the fur ball's touch, but Dale reached out and touched her shoulder, reassuring her that it was okay.

    "They're really harmless," he said.  "And kind of sweet.  I think this one likes you."

    "I think they're kind of cute," Catherine admitted.

 
*****

   David had been thinking about what Jerry said and he was right.  He tried to explain it away in his mind as a heat of the moment thing, but he couldn't.  He knew he liked Phillip.  Everybody with eyes knew he liked Phillip, and Phillip knew he liked Phillip.  It was practically useless to resist.  It was only that he was conditioned to hide the way he felt.  Even though David had been very clear with his father upon coming out, it had not made the man very receptive.  David wasn't actively  hiding, but he never had anything in particular to hide.  Once his father had made it clear that he would be as supportive as he could be, but he didn't necessarily approve, David had thrown himself into his job and his schoolwork and tried to forget any romantic notions that he'd gotten into his head.  Oscar was a hard working man who did his best for his family.  He was a good guy, and David hadn't wanted to let him down.  But then he had been whisked away, and there on some distant planet, under a blue sun, he had found the most unlikely of romances in Phillip.  And there, in the far distant future, and with people from a less distant future, and people from his own time...nobody seemed to care.  He finally realized that he needed to find Phillip and apologize for rejecting him in such a harsh and unexpected way in front of all the people who had become their friends, and an entire Rebel raiding party to boot.

    It was easy to find John and Bertram once he had passed through the encampment and its many soldiers sitting around their fires making sure the circuitry in their laser weapons was clean and free from debris.  They were only standing on the edge of the camp with the holographic display up as wide as it would go.  It showed some kind of expanding gaseous ball.  David didn't know what to think of it, and neither, it seemed, did the two detectives.

    "What is that?"  He asked as he came up behind them.

    Bertram jumped in the air at the sound of his voice.  Started by someone approaching him from behind.

    "Don't do that, David!"  He said once he had regained his composure.  John only stood there chuckling at him as he often did.

    "Sorry," David replied.  "So..."

    John shrugged at Bertram who scowled at his partner as he often did.

    "It's not as if you're going to listen to what I say if I tell you that it's against the rules to tell him."

    "I think the rules have gone down the drain," John replied seriously then turned to David.  "This is the time map.  What you see here is all of documented time and space."   He proudly waved his hand towards the display in hopes of making an impression, but David only looked past his shoulder at some point beyond the holograph.

    "Time map?"  John wiggled his fingers in David's eye line in order to garner his attention.  "Map of all of space and time?"

    "Okay, Time map, wonderful.  Have you seen Phillip?"

    "Oh, god!" John rolled his eyes dramatically.  "Not this again.  I thought you were done?"

    David only growled crossly at the detective.

    "He's over there." Bertram pointed towards the edge of the canyon.

    Phillip sat there, his feet dangling over the edge as he gazed at the sun dipping behind the mountains casting deep purple and aqua hues across the canyon.

    "It's beautiful," David said as he approached the edge of the cliff and sat down.  Phillip didn't reply.  David glanced cautiously at him and noted that Phillip's eyes remained firmly affixed to the scenic vista played out before them.

    "Will it help if I say I'm sorry?"  David asked.  "Because I am.  It was just unexpected that's all.  And all those people were there!"  He elbowed Phillip playfully in the arm.  "I'm not used to making out in front of an entire army!"  He laughed.

    Phillip turned towards him then, and he glared at David with icy blue eyes.

    "Unexpected?"

    David nodded.  He was unsure of where the conversation was heading and not at all comfortable with it, but he couldn't leave without making amends.

    "It was so unexpected that you, several hours after it happened, you fucking switched partners on me?  What's the real reason, David?  The puritanical attitudes about sex from when you come from?  Or is it the fact of my occupation that you find so objectionable?"

    "Both...Neither...I..." David buried his face in his hands.  He didn't know how to explain it, but he had never liked anybody as much as he liked Phillip, and he was quickly pulling their friendship apart brick by brick.  He was ill equipped to fix it.

    "Look, I've never done this.  I don't know what to say to you."  He finally admitted with a heavy sigh.  "I've never done this and I'm scared."

    "Please, don't tell me you're a virgin," Phillip muttered caustically.

    David regarded him, taken aback.  "What?  No.  What does that have to do with anything?  I mean, I've never been in a relationship long enough to fuck it up as badly as I'm doing right now."

    "We've only known each other for, like, three days."  Phillip's glare soften somewhat and a curious expression crossed his features.

    "Exactly," David replied with a frown.  "I'm too busy for relationships back home, just random hook-ups.  How can I even judge you for what you do?"

    "David," Phillip replied.  "I want you to know it's a legal profession where I'm from.  That's why I was registered.  You have to.  Keeps everybody safe.  The health care plan is phenomenal actually."

    "Really?"  David asked; his frown remained.

    Phillip nodded.  "John knows how your people regard prostitution.  He was using it to upset you."

    "Wow, a valid career path," David muttered.  My parents would have a heart attack."

    "Yeah,"  Phillip looked away, back towards the sunset.  "It's a valid career path.  I didn't say there was any dignity in it."  He sighed.  "It's not who I am.  I'm a mathematician.  That's who I want people to know."

    "Why do you do it then?"  David asked.

    "I lost a lot of money," Phillip replied sadly.  "I got involved with some bad kids at school, there's this game...I won't get into it.  The rules are complicated.  Suffice it to say I gambled away my life's savings.  I had to drop out.  I wanted to make cash fast, so I could enroll in school again.  It was the easiest way.  That's how I met Gerald.  Now I know he researched me for my temporal mathematics and programming skills.  He pretended to fall in love with me, David.  He pretended to be my friend.  He was rich.  I thought once we got this finished...his little time shifting project.  He was going to write his thesis on fissures.  How they were harmless.  That's what he said at first, but then it turned into this game just to prove that he could and that it would be fun.  I fell under his spell.  I'll admit it.  I thought I was going to be able to quit and go back to school so I could do what I loved.  Anyway... that's why I did it."

    "Oh," David said.  He turned from Phillip and looked at the sky.  The sun had almost entirely disappeared behind the mountains.

    It was David who initiated contact.  He brushed his fingers across Phillip's hand as they sat beside each other.  Phillip didn't respond at first, and David couldn't hide his disappointment.  He felt like his heart was being crushed, and he couldn't breath.  He was close to standing back up and storming off to the tent he was to share with Jerry, but it was then that Phillip laced his fingers through David's.  David let out a massive sigh, causing Phillip to look up at him and smile.

    "What?"

    "I thought you weren't going to forgive me," David admitted.  "I'm pretty sure I was going to have a nervous break down."

    Phillip laughed at him.  "You?"

    "Yeah." David nodded.  "I have to admit it...you are kind of intimidating."

    "Me?"  Phillip laughed even harder.  He was hardly a man of formidable stature.

    "Yeah," David replied.  "You're so smart.  It's intimidating.  That's all.  I'm just a laborer."

    Phillip chuckled.  "You don't give yourself enough credit, David."  He said.  "I happen to know that you're brilliant."

    "Do you now?"  David arched a curious eyebrow at him.  "Do you want to tell me?"

    "I'm not supposed to.  It's bad enough I told Cath what she does." Phillip replied.  "Just do me a favor?"

    "Anything," David said.

    "Okay," Phillip continued.  "Don't become a landscaper.  You're meant for better things.  Stay in school.  I promise it will be worth it."

    "Okay," David replied sincerely.

    "You're not going to protest?"

    David shook his head.  "I believe you.  You're from the future.  You must know something right?  You don't happen to remember the triple crown winners for the next ten years do you?"

    Phillip laughed.  "Even if I knew what the hell you were talking about, me spilling the results of past sporting events is definitely something that will land me a really long prison sentence."

    "Really?"  David's teasing tone left him and it was replaced with a more serious one.

    "Yeah," Phillip replied.  "But it's not as if it would matter anyway.  This little escapade has probably earned me life anyway."

    "No." David gasped.  "They can't...I mean...you can't..."

    "Let's make the most of the time we have," Phillip replied as he squeezed David's hand reassuringly. 

    "I'm not going home then.  I'm staying with you."

    "You can't," Phillip replied.  "You have to go home, and I have to go home.  Time travel isn't all it's cracked up to be really."

    David stared at him then with a look so heartbroken that Phillip choked up at the sight of it.  He pulled David close and hugged him tightly.  "I want to tell you it's gonna be okay," he said.  "I really do."

    "Come on," John interrupted them before the conversation could progress any further.  "It's dark now.  Time to go back to camp"

    Phillip and David stood up.

    "Can we..." David motioned between himself and Phillip and looked up hopefully at the detectives.  Bertram looked very ready to let them partner up again, but John sternly shook his head, asserting his position as senior detective.

    "But..."

    "No," John replied.  "He's with us, like it should have been from the start."  He eyed Bertram.  "Inter-Temporal relationships are frowned upon."

    "But..."

    "Go to your tent kid," John waved David away.

    "I'm not a kid," David muttered as he reluctantly released Phillip's hand and trudged in the direction of his assigned sleeping quarters.

    "Did you have to do that?"  Bertram asked his partner.

    "Do you have to question my authority in front of a prisoner?"  John replied.

    "I'm a prisoner now?"  Phillip spoke. 

    "You know you are," John replied.

    "Come on," Bertram said.  "It's not going to kill anybody if you let them spend the night..."

    Phillip shook his head and was surprised to find an embarrassed blush rising to his cheeks.  He hadn't felt so flustered about spending the night with somebody in a good long while.

    "You're only saying that because you want to sleep with Jody," John muttered.

    Phillip's head shot up to look at the geeky detective in surprise.  Bertram shrunk away from his gaze and turned his attentions towards John.

    "You're way off base, buddy."

    "Am I?"

    Bertram nodded in a not so subtle way towards Phillip who was curiously listening in.  "Let's not discuss this right now.  It's neither the time nor the place."

    "Fine." John shrugged.  He stalked away leaving Phillip and Bertram to fend for themselves.

    "If it were up to me," Bertram admitted, "You could switch up.  I understand."

    "So you do want to sleep with Jody?"

    Bertram sighed.  "I didn't say that.  I just...I like her.  She's nice.  But I'm an officer of the law.  What am I going to do?"

    Phillip frowned sadly.  "Yeah."  He agreed.  "The laws of time."

    "Fuck time," Bertram muttered caustically.  "C'mon.  Let's get some sleep.  We've a long journey across those mountains to the rebel city.  I'll see what I can do for you two once we get there."

    "Really?"  Phillip allowed an edge of hope to creep into his voice.

    "Yeah."  Bertram nodded.  "But no promises, okay?"

    "Okay," Phillip replied enthusiastically.  "You think John..."

    "I think we'll see," Bertram said.  "I think he's just cranky because he didn't want to share a tent with Jerry.  You know...the man snores.  Loudly."

    Phillip chuckled.  "Yeah."

    "C'mon," Bertram lay a hand on Phillip's shoulder and guided him towards the campfires and the tents beyond them.

   In Gerald Moxley's time line it had been almost a week since he had put his plan into motion.  He had forgotten that there was any plan at all.  It seemed like the life that had slowly replaced his old one was the way it had always been.  It wasn't the life he had imagined.  It certainly wasn't according to plan.  According to his carefully calculated machinations, his life was only supposed to improve with the removal of the selected humans from the 21st century.  Three people was all it took to increase his fame and fortune he had thought.  One animal rights activist, one chemist, and a contractor that had engineered an infallible system of building that made structures virtually disaster proof.  The last one had only been for Gerald's perverse pleasure in seeing the Golden Utopia's biggest cities crumble under the frequent earthquakes and fires brought on by the quadruple suns. 

    He had forgotten all that as if it had never existed though.  His life had slowly been replaced by something far more ordinary.  His parents lived in a small one bedroom apartment, where he slept in the bathtub and worked all day at a horrible restaurant where they served something called 'hot oiled foods'.  He came home every day smelling like grease and exhausted.  His fortunes were gone.  No longer was his father the fine diplomat that he had been, wining and dining the royalty and political leaders of lands far and wide throughout the universe.  No.  He was a government employee who went around collecting tithes from the Utopian subjects.  His mother was no longer the beautiful wife of a diplomat.  She was harassed and irritable and worked at a Laundromat.  The sky was no longer clear and bright.  Where there was once the glow of four suns lighting the world, there now hung a dense cloud of smog.  People puttered through the great city in their gasoline powered motor cars, and Gerald had forgotten that he had invested in oil at all.  His fortune lay hidden away in a nondescript local bank at the foot of a soot stained skyscraper in the middle of the city.

    It was that day, a week after the experiment had gone terribly wrong that Gerald Moxley found a key.  It was hidden away in the inside pocket of a jacket that he rarely wore and was glowing faintly.  As soon as he touched it the glow melted away and a memory clicked into place.  The key had been surrounded by a time lock that only Gerald could break through.  It was for a safety deposit box. 

    He scratched his head curiously as he looked at the key from where he was getting ready for work in his bathroom / bedroom.  He could have gone on to the restaurant but curiosity got the better of him.  It was a long walk to the bank which was across town.  The proprietor of the business eyed him curiously as if Gerald was not the kind of man to have anything worth saving, but the fact remained that he had a key and the proper identification.  Gerald Moxley was the man who had reserved the box.

    Inside, glowing faintly, was a computer.  As soon as Gerald touched it, his memories came flooding back.  The broken time line.  Phillip.  His original history, and everything that he hadn't realized he had lost.  He wasn't supposed to replace his own time line.  That wasn't part of the plan.  He had been so careful not to displace anybody that had direct bearing on his own family, and yet there he was,  poor as no Moxley before him had ever been.  He had been so carefully.  He muttered at the computer and pulled up his data on the screen.  The holographic display glowed a faint green in front of him.  Jerry Baum, David Rodriguez, and Catherine Jones.  He hacked into the internet and quickly researched the detectives that had been shoved into the room at the last minute.  They had no direct bearing on his life either.

    "What is the deal?" he muttered to himself.  He had researched the plan to within an inch of his and Phillip's lives.   He went back through the video footage he had complied of the event.  There was Mary and Phillip sitting on a bench.  He paused for a moment and admired the blonde Adonis that he had created in Phillip with the mask that was such a far cry from the thin dark haired mathematician who had fallen on hard times.  Even Gerald had to admit that the boy had a brilliant intellect.  He shook his head and smiled a bit maliciously.  Sending the loose end off with his captives had been an unexpected bonus.  He only wished that he could have cameras in Chromia to document the event.  He knew they would find out that Phillip was in on it with the Time Detectives there.  It would be all over for the boy then.  If his victims didn't get him, then surely the Royal Chromian  Guard would.

    He saw Jerry's loud wife screaming in the lobby.  He saw David rescuing Catherine. 

    "Young love," he muttered to himself with a roll of his eyes.

    Then the wife was making a loud scene again.  She was screaming about the air being too cold where she had been seated to a mortified server.  The server ran off to the corner towards a bus boy and a man in some sort of dog costume.  Together they escaped the dining room.  Gerald followed them with his camera through the halls and into the room.  The room he had transported through time to Chromia. 

    "Shit," he muttered.

    Those three were not supposed to be there.

    He quickly pulled up a facial recognition program onto the hand held computer.  It was not technology he was supposed to have, and once again he had to thank Phillip and his programming genius for being able to hack into government systems and provide him with such a tool.  He zoomed in on Jody.

  It was quickly revealed that she had no significant impact on time.  Displacing her would only cause a few small inconsequential ripples.  Ned had become a major proponent for the legalization of marijuana.

    "That explains that," Gerald muttered, remembering his previous arrests for drug possession.

    That left Jason.  Gerald read about his art career, which seemed inconsequential when he was alive.  The accolades only came after his death and he was lauded as one of the twenty first century masters.  Gerald thought it had nothing to do with his life at first and that Jason would only cause the kind of ripples that Jody had.   That was, he thought that until he researched his own history and found the missing link.  Sometime in the late twenty third century one of the Moxley ancestor's had found a painting by the great Jason Simmons.  It was a master work that had been thought to be missing and it caused a massive stir in the art world.  Gerald's ancestor had sold that painting for millions of dollars and thus began the Moxleys on the path to fame, fortune, and influence in the world of high society.

    "Fuck," Gerald said loudly.  He managed to control his anger as to not throw the computer at a wall.  Jason Simmons was not supposed to be in that room.  He directly affected Gerald Moxley's own personal history and that was one minor ripple that Gerald could not live with.  It had put he and his family in the poor house.  Had he left time alone they would still be riding high in the world at the top of the Golden Utopia's massive skyscrapers with the suns glinting off their surfaces enfolding the city in a soft and warm light  instead of at the bottom of a dingy building, in a smoky city filled with buildings no taller than two or three stories; a city where escaped griffins flew around terrifying citizens with their extra large beaks and hind cat claws leaving piles of practically unavoidable excrement wherever they went.

    He made his way to the nearest public computer terminal, which happened to be at the library.  He was going to have to put things right.  It was the only way he could put his life back in order, and now that he knew what he was missing, he knew that he couldn't continue to be a cook in a dead end job forever.  He was so much greater than that, and there was still time to prove it.

    Arwyn was dazed.  He hadn't done a temporal jump in a very long time.  Anne sat him down on a bench underneath a tall palm tree and trotted off to get him a bottle of water.  She returned in a snit.

    "Can you believe this cost me four United States Twenty First Century Dollars?" She handed it over to him.  "Do you need another pill?"

    "Maybe, yeah," he replied uneasily. 

    She pulled out the blister pack and handed him another pill, which he gulped down with a large swig from the bottle of water.

    "This tastes horrible," he muttered.

    "Yeah," she replied.  "It was probably bottled straight out of a tap.  Four dollars!"

    "Don't we have something else we're supposed to be doing here?" He looked up at her.  "I mean...I don't...fuck.  Aren't those pills supposed to work?  I don't remember."

    "You'll be fine."  She hauled him to his feet.  "It'll take a couple of minutes.  I'll jog your memory...we're here to investigate a fissure in the time line.  Nobody believes me except for you."

    He nodded, his memory slowly filtering back into his conscious. 

    "Okay, so..."

    She looked down at her hand held computer and frowned.  "This is weird." she said.

    "What?"  Arwyn motioned for her to sit down next to him on the bench so he could look.  Instead she activated a time field and turned on the holographic projection. 

    "Well, first of all," She muttered.  "John's TTD is off, and that's not allowed."

    Arwyn nodded.

    "Second of all, it's linked to another inactive TTD."

    "So?"

    "That isn't mine." She turned and scowled at him.  "You're only supposed to be linked with your partner."

    "Anne," Arwyn said gently.  "You said you were in a time loop for ten years..."

    "Eight Month's!" She snapped irritably at him.  "Eight Months."

    "Fine.  Eight Months."  He repeated at her insistence.  "So, was the force supposed to just wait around for you to come out of it?  John probably had to work.  I don't know about your time line, but in mine we run short on detectives all the time.  It's dangerous work."

    She hand waved him away, not wanting to hear it.  John may have been a rookie, and he may have been a handful, but he was her partner and she wasn't so keen on being replaced.  She looked up the ID on the third TTD.

    "Bertram Powers?" She squealed.  "What the hell?  He's gone through four partners already!  All of them requested transfers and he's been taken off field duty.  What the fuck is John doing swanning around time with Bertram Powers?  Fuck."

    "Come on, calm down Anne," Arwyn said.  "We'll get to them."

    "You don't know John like I do," she said.  "I'm sure this is partially down to him doing something monumentally stupid."

    "He can't be that bad, Anne," Arwyn said.

    Anne shook her head.  "John is a handful.  I shudder to think what that man would be like as a senior officer, which he would be to Bertram Powers."  She heaved a heavy sigh.  "I'm afraid we've got our work cut out for us, Arwyn.  Feeling better?"

    "Much." he nodded.  "Thank you."

    They stood up and approached the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant and found chaos.  Emergency vehicles surrounded the area, and an entire chunk of building was missing.  Customers were streaming out of the dining room wailing and screaming.  One particularly loud dark haired woman was crying out for someone named Jerry and clutching a young boy to her chest.

    "We have to be discrete," se said to Arwyn as they picked their way through the crowd.  "I'm tracking the TTDs."

    And they found Mary.  She was crying, the TTD's set near her feet as she sat on a curb next to some landscaping and a fenced off area that led to a large wooden roller coaster.  The park had not been shut down due to the chaos and the delighted screams of the amusement park's patrons could be heard along with the sounds of the victims.  It was a strange and disconcerting juxtaposition.  Anne did her best to ignore it as she sat down next to Mary and placed a comforting arm around her.  She motioned for Arwyn to grab the TTDs, and he did so without hesitation.  She smiled a little to herself.  That was what she'd needed, a partner that would trust her implicitly.

    "There, there," Anne cooed in Mary's ear, hoping she didn't sound completely insincere.  "It's okay."

    "No!"  She wailed.  "This is my fault!  This man...he came and told me...he said I had to find these people and take them to that room..."  she broke down into choked sobs, and it took a few minutes for Anne to calm her down once again.

    "Can you tell me what he looked like?"

    "Gorgeous!" She seemed to forget her upset and gazed happily up at Anne.  "He was, like, the hottest guy I'd ever seen in my life!  And he picked me!  It was like I had to do what he said.  It all sounded so perfect in my mind."

    "Mask," Anne muttered at Arwyn.  He only stood there observing with a look of rapt fascination on his face.  He never thought he would make it out into the field again without becoming violently ill.  It was all so new and exciting and he wanted to learn. 

    "Okay, thank you."  Anne stood up and left Mary on her own.  She led a befuddled Arwyn away from the scene.

    "What was that?" he asked her.

    "What was what?"

    "You're just going to leave her there?  That woman stole a Time Travel Device...two Time Travel Devices!  You can't leave her there.  You have to take her in."

    "She doesn't understand what she did, Arwyn," Anne said as she occupied herself with getting the TTDs back online.  "It would never hold up in court, and there's no reason to further risk someone from the past.  Taking them into future custody is really not wise unless you have a really good case.  She was obviously fooled by a mask."

    "What is a mask and what..."  He paused, trying to get his mind right and remember his class on crossing time lines.  Nothing was coming to him except a certain blank nothingness, he remembered as the zoned out feeling he got when he was listening to the lectures in those classes.

    "Look, taking people from before the invention of time travel into custody... It's a tricky thing, okay?  So we like to avoid it.  She'll be fine.  We've got the TTDs back.  We'll get everybody back in the right spot at the right time, and all of this goes away like it never happened."

    "This is going to do my head in," he mumbled and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead.  "How do you manage it?"

    "It's what I do." Anne looked up from the TTD's and grinned at him.  She turned back to the machines and with a final flourish clicked them on.

    She paused then.

    "What now?"  Arwyn asked.

    Anne stared down at the Time Travel Devices.

    "Uhh...I don't know," she admitted.

    Arwyn looked at her with a worried expression written all over his face.  The trail had gone cold.

    "Should we call in for back up?"  Arwyn asked.

    "No!" Anne shook her head.  "I already got kicked out of the precinct once for being crazy.  If they found out I was using this kind of tech...if they found out you were helping me... No.  It wouldn't be good news, Arwyn."

    He frowned at her.  He wanted to protest, but he knew she was right.  They had gone rogue.  The only helping they would be getting would be from themselves.


*****


  It had been a long and arduous journey down the narrow path of the canyon to the river below.  Three Quicklings had fallen into the water and drowned, and everybody was on edge.  Bertram had somehow managed to convince Jody to get back up on the horny horse.  She had entrusted her crutches to Dale and only agreed if she could ride double with Bertram.  So she sat there in front of him, snuggly nestled in his arms, feeling more at peace than she had in a long while.  She had come to grips with the fact that they were on an alien planet and she might not ever get back to her own planet or her own time for that matter.  She was still frightened for her old mother, but she relaxed knowing there was nothing she could possibly do to fix it.  She would let the chips fall where they may and she would adapt. 

    David had adapted.  Bertram had convinced his partner that Phillip didn't need to be under their constant supervision, so David and Phillip rode along side each other, laughing and joking and behaving as they had most of the time since they had met...completely smitten with each other.

    Ned and Jason were still riding together as Catherine tried desperately to gain Jason's attentions.  She rode along behind him, trying to think of things to say, but she had never been a brave person.  Tagging along with the group didn't make her any braver.  She was still the same shy girl she had always been.

    "You might not want to ride so close," Jerry said to her from his horse a few yards back.  She reigned in her steed and pulled up along side him with a sigh.  She would have ridden beside Jason, but the path alongside the river was not wide enough to ride three abreast, and he was almost completely oblivious to her presence.

    "I know I'm the old fart here," Jerry chuckled at her.  "But I'm not that bad.  Promise."

    "Oh, it's not that," Catherine said dejectedly.  "I'm just trying to get Jason to notice me.  Silly girl stuff.  You know."

    "aha," Jerry replied.  "Maybe I can help.  I've been doling out sage wisdom the past couple of days...maybe that's my great contribution to society that has earned me my place on this little field trip?  What do you think?"

    Catherine laughed at him then.

    "It's no laughing matter," Jerry put on a mock serious tone, inciting more laughter in her.  He was happy to clown around and make her feel better.  It made him feel useful.  He hated feeling useless more than anything else.  He was a man who worked with his hands.  Intellectual discussion of time travel made little sense to him if he couldn't wrap his own two hands around it.

    "Look at that."  He pointed to Phillip and David, holding hands as they rode along.  "Who was David riding with yesterday?"  Jerry arched his eyebrows at her and pointed to himself. 

    Catherine looked from David to Jerry and couldn't contain the small gasp that escaped her.  "Really?"

    "I only told him what everybody with eyes already knew." Jerry shrugged. 

    "Which is?"  Catherine asked, bewildered.

    "It's not rocket science.  Obviously they like each other," Jerry replied.  "And now I'm going to tell you."

    "Okay, then, Matchmaker," She grinned.  "Make me a match!"

    "The key is...just be yourself."

    "Oh, please," she scoffed.  "That's the biggest cliche in the book, Jerry."

    "Maybe," he replied.  "But it works.  Elaborate plans and schemes..." Jerry swung his arms free and wide, gesturing to the world around them.  "Well, those rarely work, do they?  I say, the easiest explanation; the simplest solution; it's always the best!"

    She couldn't bring herself to use the simplest solution, though, which would have just been to ask Jason out on a date.  Instead, she hung around in the periphery of his vision waiting for him to notice her, and if he never did then she would just go back to her life.  Business as usual.  If she ever got back to her life, that was.

    It was a long trip through the Needles that day.  The Needles was a vast plane broken up by rock spires that reached far up into the air.  Dale had pleasantly explained to the guests of the Rebel Army that they had been left behind after many years of wind erosion.  The spires had once been entirely level ground.  Dale also had to explain that the army had to be on their toes.  There were creatures that lived in the Needles.  They were large panther-like beasts that did not hesitate in killing anybody who stepped onto their territory.  Luckily they were solitary creatures, and if the group was wary enough then everybody would be fine.

    They lost four more Quicklings.  Catherine felt fit to ride up to the front of the group and address Dor.  Her partner, Jerry followed along behind her, though he was much more timid when it came to addressing the knightly attired leader.  When it came to matters of the heart Catherine was still a little girl it seemed, but when she felt her fellow creature was endangered she came at you like a storm.  She came down on Dor with the raging fury of a tornado.  He wasn't protecting the Quicklings after all, and after what Dale had told her; that they didn't know how to take care of themselves in the wilderness, she couldn't stand by and watch that sort of cruelty.  The only Quickling that had stayed relatively safe was Jody's.  She had named it Maribelle, and it had moved from following Dale around to following along behind Jody and Bertram, being careful to stay away from the horse's feet.

    Dor, in the end, had been forced to acquiesce to her wishes.  It was best for the party to avoid the woman's screeching histrionics if they were to stay clear of the Needles Panthers.  She rode back to Jerry, more proud of herself than she had ever been, and the Quicklings were rounded up and made to march in the center of the group instead of trailing along at the end, and thus they avoided any further slaughter.  They chirped happily, and though the soldier's grumbled about it, Catherine found that it was music to her ears.

    "I saved a life, Jerry," She said to her latest partner.

    "I'm proud of you, kid," he replied, clapping her on the back.

    She turned and grinned brightly at him.  Her parents had never said such things to her.  They were too preoccupied with their own drama, yet here was a stranger who was more than willing to reach out to her.  She had been surrounded by people who had reached out to her in the days since she'd been abducted.  It had started all the way back on that fateful morning when Esther Baum had verbally attacked her, and David Rodriguez stood up for her.  Family, she realized, was so much more than flesh and blood.


*****



    They had made it all the way through the Needles and were halfway through the mud flats. 

    Phillip stopped his horse.  He could tasted the metallic tang and feel the energy building in the air, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

    "Fuck," he muttered and pulled his horse around to face the opposite direction.  David followed suit, much to the chagrin of the people behind them in line.

    "Let's get a move on," one of the soldiers shouted at him, but Phillip waved him away and pointed towards the building clouds far off in the distance.

    "We have to go back," he said softly at first.  Then  louder as it became clear that nobody had heard him.

    "We have to go back," he shouted forcefully and jumped off his horse.  "Look!  He's bringing us back.  Gerald is bringing us back.  We have to go back to the woods!"  The small group of soldiers and people from his own group that he had cut off from the main caravan by stopping there in the middle of the mud flats path, formed a small half circle around him and looked off into into the distance. There, a temporal storm like the one that had whisked them away, was brewing.

    "Come on!"  He shouted excitedly as his surrounding companions glanced at each other instead of him.  They were too far away, and everybody seemed to realize it except for Phillip.

    "Why isn't anybody moving?!  This is the way back!  It's our chance to get home!  He's sending us back, just like I said he would!"  He wailed as he twirled around and came face to face with expressions of pity everywhere he looked.  He finally settled on one face he could take comfort in.

    "David?" he said the name weakly.

    David dismounted and cautiously approached Phillip.  He looked lost and unsettled and repeated David's name again, even more softly than he had before.

    David hugged Phillip and pulled him close, but the man went limp in his arms, and they both sank to a heap on the ground.

    "It's gonna be okay," David cooed in his hear and stroked his hair.

    "How can you say that?" Phillip sobbed.  "We're too far away.  We should have just stayed where we were.  I told you.  I told... I..."

    "Shhhh," David whispered.  "We couldn't have stayed there this long."

    On the sidelines John Arker moved as if he were about to order the two boys back on their horses and back on the trail.  Moving forward was the only thing to do at that point, but Detective Powers lay a hand on his partner's shoulder and shook his head harshly.

    "You're gonna give them a couple minutes, John."

    "But..."

    Bertram's glare was enough to silence John then, and they returned to their mounts
    
    "Can't you give them a break?"  Bertram asked.

    "Why should I?"  John asked.  "I don't necessarily trust that Phillip guy."

    "I think he's proven that he's as much a victim here as we are, John.  He's been more than willing to help us out when we should have just stayed put like he told us to in the first place."

    John could think of nothing to say to that so he stayed silent. 

    "When we get settled in at the Rebel City...you're gonna let them have a night.  You got that?"

    John bristled at being ordered by Bertram.  Whether or not his partner had a point was not the point.

    "We're not supposed to sleep with someone from another time Bertram, and if you think you're going to get your way with Jody because they...."

    "Stop bringing her into this!"  Bertram snapped.  He looked over at her where she was chatting idly with Dale and Catherine after she had tumbled from Bertram's horse in all the excitement Phillip's ranting had caused.  She had looked up at him with a silly grin on her face and a bruised bottom, but her ankle was okay.  It was feeling good enough to walk on without crutches, but she wasn't going to admit that and give up her seat on Bertram's horse. 

    "Why don't you just pretend to have a heart for two seconds?" he muttered at John, then urged his horse away and towards Jody.  The sooner they arrived at the Rebel City, the better. 

  It took Bertram a few hours to realize that his computer was beeping.  The sound had been muted and sounded as if it were further away than only his jacket pocket.  He reached for it excitedly and held it up to John.

    "Someone activated our TTDs," he said happily.  "There may be hope after all!"

    "Hope?"  John muttered.  "I fail to see how that is going to do us any good, Bertram.  The TTDs can't track us here because...they're over there, back in time."

    "You underestimate my vast intellect," Bertram replied smugly and held up his hand held computer. 

    John rolled his eyes.  "The plan is to get to the city, cobble together a TTD from whatever tech these backwater heathens have on hand.  You and Phillip will write the temporal algorithms used to power it and..."

    "Forget that," Bertram shook his adamantly.  "I..."

    "I don't care if you don't want to work with future boy!"  John scowled.  "You need to swallow your pride and work with him..."

    "Shut-up already," Bertram snapped.  "Look, I tied the signal from this computer to my Time Travel Device.  It wouldn't have worked because it was off, but now someone turned it on..."

    "They can track it?"

    Bertram nodded with a grin.  Relief momentarily spread across John's face, but was quickly replaced by a hard glare of cynicism.

    "I just hope whoever is on the other side of that signal is on our side," he said.
    

****

    Arwyn and Anne had reactivated the time field in order to study the TTDs that had been left behind.  They wondered if there might not be a clue as to what happened to their owners inside.  The two barely noticed the world around them revert to normal.  The chaos that had surrounded the Knotts Berry Farm restaurant no longer existed.  It stood there in its rightful place, with a massive line of old ladies and tourists in front waiting to put their name on the list to be seated for brunch.

    It was Arwyn who looked up first.  He nudged Anne and she joined him to look up at the missing chunk of building that was there as if it had never left.

    "They're back!  She said happily.  She deactivated the time field and led Arwyn into the building.  They passed Mary at the hostess kiosk, taking down names.  They passed Catherine's parents, just returned from the restroom.  They wondered why their daughter insisted on staying home to study.  They passed The Rodriguez family, who were trying to wrangle their rambunctious middle child, Jose.  They thought David was at his landscaping job.  They passed a loudly complaining dark haired woman, who was screaming about her husband missing out on brunch to play golf with her cousins, and they passed a group of servers who were muttering to themselves about the extra workload they had to take on because Jody, Jason and Ned had not bothered showing up for work.

   They had no recollection of anything that had happened.  Time had reverted back to the second the building had been stolen, but when Arwyn and Anne reached their intended destination they found that the room was empty.

    "Shit." Anne said.

    "I know this is John's fault somehow," she muttered.

    "Come on," Arwyn said.  "Let's not blame the victims, alright?  He may have done something ill advised, but we all make mistakes."

    "Some more than others," she replied. 

    "You're upset; I understand," Arwyn replied.  "I would be too if I woke up after ten...eight months and everything I knew had changed completely.  He's not your partner anymore, so whatever he's done it's not a reflection on you.  And don't take it out on him because you're worried about him."

    "Of course I'm worried about him," She replied.  "He's...a rookie, out there in time with a failed field agent."

    "It'll work out," Arwyn said.  "Let's go get an ice cream and do a little more research on what happened here, okay?"

     "Now's not the time for ice cream," Anne replied with a weary sigh.

    "There's always time for ice cream," Arwyn said.  He offered his arm as she looked skeptically up at him.  Then she accepted his offer and they walked back into the newly restored Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant.

****

    The Rebel City was more impressive then John had thought it would be.  He took a moment away from nagging Bertram to revel in the sight of actual technology.  The metal buildings were low to the ground, but, aside from the gasoline powered vehicles zipping about, it seemed to be a reasonably advanced society.  Truth be told John had half been expecting an encampment of hutches made out of sticks with thatched roofs and chickens running about the dirt roads, or, best case scenario, a medieval town surrounded by a tall stone wall and a moat.  As it were, despite the lack of temporal technologies, the city was livable. 

    The group was assembled and brought before the rebel council.  Though it was not so much an interrogation as it had been with the Royal Chromian general.  They were invited to sit at the round table and discuss their fateful predicament.  In the end they were offered free room and board at the nearest hotel and access to whatever technologies and means they needed to achieve their goal. 

    "Our scientists have been working so hard on mastering this time travel," the head of the council, a woman no older than Catherine said.  "They have not been able to come close.  We have lost some good people in our experiments."

    "Get them stuck in walls and stuff?" John asked smugly.

    The councilwoman blanched at his flippant description of the horrors their attempts at time travel had wreaked on the scientific team that had been gathered to unlock the secrets of time and space.  Having someone rematerialize in the middle of a wall, or some other object was the least of the horrors.

    "What makes you think you will be any more successful," she asked.

    "This," John pulled the broken TTD out of his pocket and waved it in the air.

    "This is a time travel device!"

    The occupants of the table Oooed and Ahhhed, until one older man coughed and informed them that it looked too small to be of any use at all.

    "That's the problem," Bertram spoke up enthusiastically.  "This one is even more advanced than the ones ... err ... that were stolen from John and I!  The nanotech is too small and too advanced for me to fix.  I do know how to build a more rudimentary model as it were, and..."  he sighed and begrudgingly held a hand out to acknowledge Phillip.  "Phillip here...he's an absolutely brilliant coder and expert in temporal mathematics.  He can fill in the software side of things."

    The council eyed Phillip curiously.  He looked right back at them as calm as can be.

    "Him?"  One the older man finally said with barely concealed contempt.  "What is he?  Twelve?"

    The rest of the group tittered at his comment.  Underneath the table David gave Phillip a reassuring pat on the knee.  He glanced at David with a slight smile.  Though he didn't particularly need the reassurance, it was still appreciated. 

    "May I have the computer, Detective Powers."  Phillip held out his hand as he stood up being careful to keep his eyes firmly trained on the members of the council who sat across the table.  Bertram obligingly held out the device, and Phillip punched up the holographic screen.  The council stared at it in amazement.

    "I'm from the 82nd century," Phillip said. "There's only two things I know how to do well, and the other one is Maths." He stole a glance back at David and smirked.   David's blush could be seen through his dark complexion and Phillip quickly turned back towards the council.  "With a concentration on Temporal Mathematics and theory of course."

    He punched up another screen and began an overly complicated explanation of the time map and the theories of time travel.  Every time a scientist deigned to stump him with one of their questions he had an answer.  He kept at it until he had silenced the doubters.  Then he sat down to the very approving looks of his companions.  Even Bertram had to smile at the amazed look on the council's faces.

    "And there you have it," John said.  "I trust that you believe us now?"

    One of the scientist council members addressed the detective hopefully.   "You will share with us the secrets of time travel?"

    John shook his head.  "I'm afraid I can't do that.  We're detectives and we've pledged to uphold the laws of the galaxies, and well... We can't give you the technology.  You have to discover it on your own, through your own means or it could be disaster for the time line.  It's already been damaged enough by our mere presence on this planet.  There's been a fissure in time...the past has changed.  We just can't... I hope you understand."

    Several of the council had taken on angry scowls upon hearing this, but the woman in charge hushed their whispering and stood up to address them.

    "If we want to join in the temporal community," she said, "Then we must respect the time line and those who protect it!"  She nodded towards the detectives.  "I pray you all understand this."

    The others begrudgingly nodded in her direction.

    "Now, tomorrow is a new day," she said.  "A day filled with many exciting prospects.  Our guests are surely weary from their travels and we shall welcome them to our city.  Please," She addressed the detectives.  "Make yourselves at home."

    "Thank you," John bowed in respect and Bertram stood and followed suit. 

***

    "You were amazing," David happily chattered at Phillip later on that night.  They had tried to go out on the town and experience what life was like in the rebel city, but word had traveled fast and they had been accosted at every angle by curious onlookers and some who weren't satisfied just looking.  They wanted to know everything about 21st century Earth and everything about 82nd century Golden Utopia.    They had only been out for an hour before retiring to their hotel room and ordering room service.  True to his word Bertram had left them to their own devices for the night.

    "Hardly," Phillip replied, suddenly feeling shy.

    "No, you really know your stuff," David said.  "Like I said...intimidating.  I didn't even begin to understand the stuff you were talking about in there."

    "It's easy," Phillip replied.  "I can explain...whatever you like.  Just ask."  He sat down on the bed and pulled the computer out of his pocket.  They had been able to finally shower and had been provided with new, nondescript clothing.  Phillip looked strange in a t-shirt and draw string pants.  It was a far cry from the proper waistcoat he had been wearing when he first appeared. 

    He pulled up the holographic map of time, which suddenly looked more impressive to David than when John had shown it to him.  He sat on the side of the bed opposite and gazed at the swirling mass.

    "That is time?"

    "Yep," Phillip said.  "Always expanding out.  See,"  He pointed at a bulbous outcropping.  "This is what the fissure has caused.  Sort of like a mutant time line.  Parallel worlds that aren't supposed to exist."

    "As opposed to the parallel words that are supposed to exist?"  David laughed.

    Phillip didn't.  "Exactly," he said instead, becoming serious.  "It's hypothesized that time began at one fixed point.  As with any sphere there is an infinite amount of tangents, which represent each possible outcome of every event beginning from the very first point and expanding outwards.  new worlds are created every day.  People slip in and out of time every day naturally.  Sometimes the time lines are so closely related that you don't even realize that you've slipped into a parallel world or the future.  These slips are harmless."

    "Are you serious?"  David frowned, trying to wrap his mind around it.

    "Yeah." Phillip shrugged.  "Why not?  Ever hear of Déjà vu ?"

    "So let me get this straight..." David pondered.  "I don't just feel like this thing has happened before; I accidentally slipped into my own future and saw it with my own eyes?"

    "Yep.  These events barely last more than a nanosecond at a time.  You wouldn't even notice it until it happens again and you remember it."
    
    "This is brain numbing," David admitted.  "I don't think I'm supposed to know about that; am I?"

    Phillip shook his head.  "It won't really matter.  You can't do anything to stop it.  It's a fact of life."

    "Okay." David changed the subject.  "So, you have a time map here...where are we now?"

    Phillp pulled up a different map then, pointed to an area and zoomed in on it.  "This is Chromia.  There are time signatures going in, but none coming out."

    "Because of the death thing?" David wondered.

    "Yeah."

    "And where's Earth?

    Phillip scrolled through the known galaxies stored in Bertram's computer and came upon the Milky Way.  He pointed to Earth, which twirled slowly around a hologram of the sun.

    "Hot sun," David pointed out with a smile.  Phillip laughed with him but then David frowned.  "I miss it.  The Earth.  It's a nice place."

    Phillip nodded.  He left David be alone with his thoughts for a moment.  He knew what it was like to be homesick.

    "Where are you from?" David broke in to Phillip's thoughts about Golden Utopia.

    Phillip scrolled to a different galaxy and pulled up his planet on the map.

    "Four suns," David murmured. 

    "Four suns," Phillip echoed him and reached his hand out towards the image of his home planet just as David did so.  Their fingers touched.  They hesitated for a moment before entwining them.  Phillip leaned across the bed into the hologram and David did the same.  They met in the middle, lips a gentle brush against one another. 

    Then David giggled. 

    Phillip pulled away and frowned in dismay.  "Well, you don't have to laugh at me," he said.

    "It's not that!" David brushed the back of his hand against his lips, causing Phillip's frown to deepen.  "I like the way you kiss, it's just that holograph thingie. It tickles when I put my head in it."

    "Oh!" Phillip laughed as well as the realization dawned on him.  He had spent enough time when he had been in college in virtual reality simulators that he was used to the feeling of a hologram on his body.

    "It was kinda hot though," David admitted.

    "Be that as it may," Phillip hastily turned the computer off with a large grin adorning his face.  "Shall we?"  He waved his hand over the bed.

    "Oh, we shall," David grinned in return.  And then he pounced.

****

    "Just wait it out," Bertram muttered at John.  He sat in the lobby next to his partner enjoying a drink and watching the rest of the group playing around at the bar.

    "Wait it out?  What the hell kind of distress signal is this?"  John complained.

    "It takes time," Bertram replied.  "Were at the edge of the known galaxies on the fucking edge of time, John.  The signal can only travel as fast as it can go."

    "Okay," John conceded.  "So can you track it at least?  Maybe make a guess as to how long we're going to be stuck here? Because, I mean, like, if it's twenty years we could probably start working on that other plan."

    "We were going to anyway," Bertram pointed out.

    John just glared at him and Bertram reached for his computer.

    It wasn't in his pocket.

    "What the fuck?"  He muttered.

    John clapped his hand to his forehead.  "You gave it to future boy at the council meeting, remember?"

    "Oh, god," Bertram said...then laughed.

    "What's so funny?" John scowled.

    "Yeah," Bertram replied.  "You're going to have to wait on your estimates, buddy, because I am so not barging in on whatever the hell they're getting up to."

    John groaned and stood up.

    "Drink?"

    "Yeah?"  Bertram eyed him curiously.

    "Sure." John shrugged.  "We've got time, right?  Besides, we're on the verge of going home...as the only time travelers to ever escape Chromia alive!  Cause for a little celebration, wouldn't you say?"

    "Absolutely!"  Bertram replied. 

  ****

   Catherine had consumed enough alcohol to acquire enough courage to ask Jason out.  They had been laughing at one of Ned's stupid jokes when she blurted it out.

    "Would you like to got get some coffee?" She asked he in a rather loud voice that garnered the attentions of several passing Rebels.

    "Do they umm...Do they even have coffee here?"  He replied in an amused voice.

    Catherine blushed at Jason, but he smiled and gently caressed her shoulder. Ned and Jody made loud "Awwing" noises at them while Jerry watched on, proud of his girl even though she had needed a bucket full of liquid courage to spur her on.
   
    "I mean...I mean when we get back," she stammered, fully embarrassed.

    He paused to consider her words and shrugged.  "Of course.  I would love to get some coffee."  He smiled at her as she let out a sigh of relief.

****

    Back in the twenty first Century a shrill alarm whistle startled Arwyn Anderson and Detective Anne Steele out of a heated debate over the merits of chocolate vs. strawberry ice cream.   Anne quickly pulled out the screaming Time Travel Device and then grinned at it and stood up from the table so fast that she nearly knocked her chair over. 

    "Oh, my god," she gasped. 

    "What is it?"  Arwyn stood up and joined her.

    "Bertram Powers is a fucking genius," she said and pointed out the distress signal.  "He linked his TTD to his personal computer.  Which is strictly forbidden, but bless his hacking heart."

    "What does that mean?"  Arwyn asked.

    "It means," Anne said with a smile curving her lips upwards.  "We're going to Chromia."

    Arwyn blanched.

    "That's...forbidden, Anne."

    "Forbidden as it may be, that's where they are," Anne replied.  "Don't worry Arwyn.  We'll jump in...grab them and jump out."

    "What if they're already dead?"  He asked.

    "Don't say that." She frowned.  It was a conclusion that she didn't even want to think about.  She linked arms with him as soon as he'd finished swallowing down his pills with a scoop of strawberry ice cream. 

    "Ready, partner?"  She asked.

    "Ready," he said.

   ***

    Phillip was startled awake by a loud noise.  He lifted his head from David's chest and came face to face with a woman pointing a gun at him.  He shook David out of his own slumber.  He woke with a start and felt his heart jump directly into his throat as soon as he saw the gun.

    "Wah...what's going on, Phillip?" He stumbled over his words and pulled the sheet that covered them up to cover his bare chest.

    "Modest now?"  Phillip smirked back at him.  David narrowed his gaze disapprovingly and nodded towards the woman with the gun.

    "Shut-up!" She snapped at them.  There was another man standing behind her timidly.  He held his firearm down, pointed at the floor.

   "Where is Bertram Powers?" She demanded as she held up the computer.

    "I'd imagine," Phillip replied.  "That he's down in the lobby."

    Anne lowered her gun slightly.  "Why do you have this computer?  Is he under arrest for violation of the Holochrome treaty?  Because we are here as..."

    "Uh...he's not," David spoke up.

    "Let me handle this," Phillip whispered at him and David was more than happy to oblige.

    "The Detectives are downstairs," Phillip said.  "Bertram let me borrow his computer."

    "Bertram doesn't let anybody borrow his computer," Anne replied suspiciously.  "How do I know you're telling the truth."

    "Lady," Phillip snorted indignantly at her.  "I'm sitting here naked and you have a gun on me.  I'm not that good of a liar."

    "Get dressed," she said.  "You're coming with us."

    Phillip shrugged.  "Fine with us. Right, David?"

    David nodded.  He followed Phillip's lead and together they traveled to the lobby with the Detectives and their guns following them.

    "We found a couple of your friends," David said as soon as he caught sight of Bertram Powers and John Arker.

    Bertram burst out laughing.  He was drunk, but he still knew what had happened.  The signal had worked, and the Detectives had tracked it directly to his computer, which had still been in Phillip's possession.

    "Yes, very funny," Phillip muttered.

    John stared up from his drink at Anne Steele.  He hadn't seen her in eight months, and it was a shock.

    "Anne?"  He stood up and approached her.  He reached out to her and ran his hand along her arm as if he wasn't sure she was really there.

    "Stop it John."  She yanked her arm away from him and scowled.  "You are still as stupid as ever.  Going in without backup again, weren't you?  You never learn.  It doesn't make you less of a man to ask for help.  I told you!"

    "Anne!"  He repeated her name and then pulled her into a huge bear hug.  "It is you."  He whispered in her ear.  "God, it's good to have you back."  He broke away from her and then asked how she had gotten out of Alrice Van die Welt's time loop.

    "You ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time, you big idiot," she said fondly.  Then she introduced him to Arwyn.

    "So." She turned and looked around the room.  "Are you guys ready to go back home?" 

    There was a cheer from the crowd, then Jody raised her hand.

    "She wants you to call on her," Bertram whispered at Anne.

    Anne regarded him curiously then pointed to Jody and urged her to continue.

    "Me and Cath have something we need to do," she said.  "Can we have, like...an hour?"

    Bertram nodded and shooed the two girls away before Anne could put her foot down.

    "He's the good cop." John pointed at him with a fond smirk.

****

    The girls found Dale at the barn on the military outpost on the outskirts of the city.  He was mucking out the stalls while Maribelle sat perched on a nearby hay bale cooing softly to herself.  Jody hobbled over to the Quickling and patted her on the furry head.

    "We have to go home," Catherine spoke to Dale.  He stopped shoveling forkfuls of bedding around and stared at her.

    "But we were going to go out tomorrow.  I was going to show you around town!"

    "I know!" Catherine replied mournfully.  "I didn't think we would have to leave so soon, but apparently those detective guys actually did something right for once!  We can't stay.  Laws of time and all that."

    Jody left the Quickling's side and approached Catherine and Dale.  Both girls took hold of one his hands, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.  He felt a slight surge of satisfaction at the thought of how the magnificent Dor, Knight of the Chromian Rebellion, would react to his squire getting such attention from the girls.

    "I wish you didn't have to leave," Dale said sadly, shoving aside that satisfaction.  He had been looking forward to spending time and learning more about the time travelers.

    "Well, when you invent time travel," Catherine said, "You come and visit us, okay?"

    "21st Century Earth," Jody contributed.  "Los Angeles, California, USA"

    Dale smiled at their good intentions even though he had a feeling that time travel wouldn't be invented in Chromia until well after his death and theirs. 

    "I will," he said instead.

    "And take care of Maribelle," Jody pointed at the Quickling. 

    "Make sure she doesn't get into trouble," Catherine contributed.  "And give her lots of fresh french fries, okay?"
    
    Dale nodded with a smile, as the girls reluctantly let go of his hands and stepped backwards.

    "Keep yourself well," he said with a parting wave.

***

    They returned to the group then.  It was time to go home.  The lobby of thier hotel was as good a place as any to start the process.  Jason and Ned held on to John as he programmed his Time Travel Device for Earth.  They winked out of existence and left the others blinking in their wake.

    "That's so wierd," Catherine spoke up.  "It's like, I know they were here, but it doesn't feel like they were here."

    "Yep," Bertram said.  "That's how it works.  Who's next?"  Jody raised her hand, and Catherine followed suit.  "Okay, girls," he said.  Jody grabbed his hand and Catherine held on to hers.  Then they were gone.

    "Okay," Anne said, taking over as the senior officer.  "Jerry and David with Arwyn. I'll drop you off with the proper authorities in your own time, Phillip."

    "No." David said stubbornly and held fast to Phillip's hand.

    Anne rolled her eyes at them.  "Fine.  You can say goodbye when we get to Earth."

    She stalked up to them, grabbed Phillip's arm and activated her TTD.

    "Just you and me," Jerry said to Arwyn.  He watched as the young detective swallowed a handful of pills.

    "You know," he said.  "I might not be a detective when the fissure is repaired."

    "Really?"  Jerry asked.

    "I might not even exist at all," he murmured. 

    "Are you going to kidnap me?"  Jerry eyed him curiously.

    "Nah," Arwyn replied.  "I'm just thinking aloud.  I'm a detective now, so I must uphold the law."  He placed a gentle hand on Jerry's shoulder, and once again the Chromian galaxy was free of time traveling interlopers.

****

    Jerry had said his good byes quickly, as he strode purposefully back into the dining room of the Knott's Berry farm restaurant.  It had been mere minutes since Mary had accosted him and enticed him into the back room with the prospect of meeting Snoopy.  To the innocent bystander who had not been flung across time, it appeared that he had turned straight back almost as soon as he'd left the room without more than a few minutes passing.

    Esther was still there loudly complaining about the air conditioning blowing on her.

    "Esther, I need to talk to you," he said firmly and concisely.  "In private."

    She glared at him.  Before he'd gone on his adventure he never would have stood up to that glare.  He would have been cowed into submission.  He wasn't going to do that anymore.  There had been one thing he had learned on his trip and that was something that Esther had never seen in him.  He had been taken for a reason.  He was worth something.

    "Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of everybody." She gestured towards the entire table.  They stared at him; every one with an identical expression of contempt.

    "Okay."  He stood up a little straighter and looked her in the eye.  She glared back at him. He would have never dared address her in such a manner before.

    "Esther," he began.  "I met you during a part of my life where I was feeling lonely.  I was at a weak point, and you took advantage of that."

    "Jerry." She scowled a warning at him, but he ignored her and continued his speech.

    "One day, Esther, whether you believe me or not, I'm going to do something great.  I'm going to do something so amazing that it's going to affect the whole of human history, beyond even the boundaries of space that we know today.  I don't know what, but it's going to happen."

    "Yeah, right!!"  Esther snorted at him, and the whole table followed her in an uproarious hail of laughter.  Jerry just smiled placidly and waited for them to finish.

    "That's the thing, Esther,"  he said when it had quieted down.  "I didn't want to do this in front of the kids, that's why I wanted to do this in private," he said sadly.  "But I'm not going to achieve anything with you by my side.  I'm sorry.  I want a divorce."

    And Esther Baum was rendered speechless for the first time in her life.  The angry color drained from her cheeks.  Before she could gather herself and explode with rage, Jerry called his children over to him and held out his hands.  They timidly took hold and looked up at him.  He was going to have to talk to them then; sit them down and tell them what had just happened in words they could understand.  It broke his heart, but he knew it was for the best.  As he led them away, Esther Baum burst into tears.

****

  Catherine timidly approached Jason.  He broke away from Ned and walked over to her.  She was almost too frightened to speak to him and was contemplating just running away.

    "Hey," he addressed her.  "How you doin'?"

    "I'm okay," she said.  Then she gathered up her courage.  "Look, about earlier..."

    "The coffee thing?"  he asked.

    She nodded.  "I meant it, you know."

    "I know," he replied.

    "Did you mean it?" She asked.

    "Why wouldn't I mean it?"  He scrunched his face up into a curious expression.

    "Oh, I don't know," she replied.  "Because we were on a planet where the male to female ratio was like ten to one, and Jody was already set on Bertram."

    He laughed and shook his head negatively.  "I said yes because I like you."  He replied.  "I want to keep in touch.  We should get to know one another better."

    Catherine smiled then, temporarily reassured that his interest in her had not been temporary.  They exchanged phone numbers and an awkward first time hug.  Catherine practically skipped back to the dining room where her mother and step father awaited. 

    "What are you so happy about?"  Her mother asked in an amused fashion.  It was a temporary stop in the fighting Catherine noted.

    "I have a date," she said with a grin.

****

    Ned and Jason trudged back to work.  After all they had been through they had gotten back the second after they had left.  Six days spent on Chromia, translated into twelve days Earth time, and they still had to finish their shift at the restaurant.

    "This is shit," Ned mumbled.  Not only was he sober, but Bertram had taken he and Jason and Jody aside and explained to them that they had only been innocent bystanders.  Their being displaced from the time line had very little to no effect on the grand scheme of things.  It had only caused a few minor, inconsequential ripples.

    They were accosted by another co-worker who asked them if they wanted to sneak outside for a smoke.  He made the ubiquitous hand motion for a joint and arched his eyebrows suggestively.  Jason declined as he always did, but Ned's reaction was unexpected.

    "No thanks," he said. 

    The co-worker looked stunned.

    "I've had enough of that," Ned replied.

    "Really?" Jason glanced over at him in astonishment.

    "Really," Ned muttered.  "Jason, I don't want to be a nobody."

    Jason patted his friend on the back.  It was good to see him take an interest in his own life for once.

****

    Jody hadn't wanted to leave.  She didn't want to say goodbye to Bertram.  She hung back and waited patiently as Bertram, John, Anne and Arwyn had a discussion quietly in the corner.  Finally he approached her.

    "You know I have to go back."  He said.

    "I know," she replied sadly.  They had never gotten a chance, and that was disappointing. 

    "So..."  He ventured.  "Would you like to go out some time?"

    Her head snapped up in shock.

    "What?"  She said rather loudly.

    "Well, if you don't mind having a boyfriend from the future," he said with a grin.

    "But I thought..."

    "There are advantages to having a minimal impact on the time line," he replied. 

    "Seriously?"  She couldn't believe her good luck. 

    "Yeah.  I mean, it's frowned upon, but inter-temporal relationships are allowed in special cases," he said.  "John and Anne are pretty sure I can get a weekend pass and holidays and a few weeks vaction.  It'll be difficult, but we can at least try.  I'll even get you a TCA so we can talk on the phone."

    Jody squealed then and practically jumped into his arms.

    "May I kiss you?"  He asked politely once she had settled down.

    "Of course you can, silly," she replied.  "I've been waiting for you to do it for almost two damn weeks now."

    He smiled at her then, tilted her head up, leaned forward and did just that.

****

    "It's not fair." David eyed Bertram and Jody.  "Why couldn't we have that?"

    "You're too important to the time line." Phillip shook his head sadly.  "If you were to jump through time...if I were to come here at all...it'd fuck things up.  You already know too much.  Besides, it's a condition of my deal..."

    "What deal?"  David eyed him.

    "I get six months community service and never travel through time again in exchange for my testimony against Gerald Moxley."

    "Some deal." David pouted and crossed his arms.

    "It is a hell of a deal," Phillip replied.  "I'd be looking at life in prison otherwise."

    "Oh, god!"  David pulled him into a hug.  "I'm never going to see you again!"

    "Probably not," Phillip replied.  He lay his head on David's shoulder.

    "It's not fair," David repeated.

    "Life's not fair," Phillip said.  "I did a bad, bad thing, David.  I don't deserve fair."

    David pulled him away in order to look him in the eye.  They both wore identical expressions of devastation.

    "This can't be happening," David muttered.  He pressed his forehead against Phillip's and they stood as close to each other as possible.

    "Just...before you go," he continued.  "Can you do me a favor too?"

    "Yeah," Phillip murmured without thinking twice.

    "Quit that job," he said.  "If you find no pleasure in it do what you love."

    Phillip was on the verge of protesting, but he sighed instead.

    "You're right," he admitted.  "But I barely have anything in the bank, Moxley was supposed to..."

    "Excuses," David replied, cutting him off before he could embark on a tangent about his former lover.  "Work hard.  Get a job where you can use your...um, math skill.  It may not be as easy, but you're too smart to throw it all away."

    "Okay," Phillip acquiesced. 

    David kissed him then.  Softly and sweetly.  It was a lingering kiss, and it meant goodbye.  Forever.  They stood with their heads together for a moment longer until Bertram gently tapped Phillip on the shoulder.

    "It's time," he said softly. 

    Phillip nodded and reluctantly stepped away from David.

    Then he was gone.

    It took David a moment to gather his wits about him and remember that they had been there at all.  When he'd recovered from the residual temporal energy  he felt himself begin to shake.  It wasn't a good sign.  His legs gave way beneath him as he realized that he had given away his heart to someone he could never be with, and he sank to the floor in a crushing despair.

   Mimi appeared a few minutes later.  She had been sitting quietly at her table when a sudden feeling of dread that something terrible had happened to her twin.  She was supposed to sneak out and meet her boyfriend by the giant cock statue in front of the restaurant, but she was filled with an urgency to find her brother instead.  She instinctively headed in the direction of the back room and found him in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor.  Completely alone.

    "David!"  She rushed to him.  She pulled him into her arms and rocked him back and forth as silent tears streamed down his face.  Her brother had always been stoic around her.  He was second in command at their house as the second biggest breadwinner next to Oscar.  He had remained stolidly silent even while enduring his father's shouting and his mother's crying when he had come out to them. She had never seen him so upset about anything.

    "What happened?"  She gasped as he eventually seemed to calm down long enough to answer.

    "It wasn't enough time," he said through a choked sob.

    She looked at him strangely then eyed a discarded Snoopy costume that lay in the corner. 

    "Aren't you a little old for that?"  She asked trying to brighten his mood.

    He only broke into tears again.

****
    
    Mimi never could tease out of him what had happened that day to upset him so, and it bothered her.  There was a change in him that only she seemed to notice.  Her father was happy that David had seemed to have given up on his idea of becoming a Landscaper to provide for the family, and instead threw himself head long into his schoolwork.  Where he had only been average he was suddenly excelling.  It wasn't easy for him at first but he eventually found his niche as he took on his advanced chemistry class.

    His parents were amazed.  Mimi was just surprised.  David was the smartest person she knew when he set his mind to learning something.  She had never suspected he would set his mind on chemistry.  He finished out the year and got a scholarship.  He was the first Rodriguez to go to ever go to college. 

    Mimi found him in his room one day, staring at a painting that had been given to him by a friend named Jason.  He often entertained friends since that day at Knott's Berry farm.  They weren't the usual working class kids that he had hung out with before.  Catherine had graduated the year before, she was studying ecology and was just becoming active in animal rights protests.  Jody was a 25 year old server at the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant who stayed at home and took care of her ailing mother.  Occasionally she was accompanied by a man in his late twenties who wore glasses; her boyfriend.  Ned had once worked at the restaurant as well, but he had since quit and was concentrating on his skateboarding career.  He wanted to go pro he said, and he hit on MiMi with abandon.   She liked his new friends, and they were all nice people, but she had no idea where he had met them or when, and it wasn't like her not to know what her brother was up to.  He was her twin.  She thought they knew everything about each other, but there was something missing between them ever since that fateful day when she had found him  at brunch completely distraught and babbling nonsense about  not having enough time.

    She walked up to the painting that day and wondered what he saw in it.  It was  a strange surreal cityscape filled with hyper-realistic golden towers.  Four orange circles depicting suns were floating in the back ground.  Jason had given it to him one day, and it had almost caused another avalanche of tears.  Whenever he looked at it his eyes filled with a desperate sadness. 

    "What happened to you that day?" Mimi finally asked.  She was getting desperate herself with her brother becoming increasingly closed off and distant towards her.

    "I fell in love."  He said simply.  She didn't believe him at first, even though it explained a lot of his behavior.

    "Is that why you haven't..."

    "Hooked up with anybody lately?"  He completed her sentence.  "Yeah."

    "But...you didn't say anything," she said.  "I would've known if you were dating somebody!"

    "You wouldn't have known him," David said.

    "I thought you weren't hiding anymore," she replied.  "You know Mom and Dad said you could bring home anybody you want.  They're not going to judge you."

    He laughed bitterly at her.  "It's not that simple, Mimi.  I'd love to bring him home, but I met him at that brunch.  He doesn't live here."

    "How could that be possible?" She wondered.  "You were gone for less than ten minutes."

    "Or two weeks," he replied.  She frowned at him.

    "You're talking  nonsense again!"  She said.  "I don't know what's wrong with you David!  All these riddles.  You and I used to talk.  We used to know each other.  Now...now...there's like a part of you I can't feel anymore.  Tell me what happened!"

    She sat with him on his bed and clutched his hands in hers.

    "I can't," he said.  "I want to, but I can't.  It's against the rules."

    "What rules?"  She said, becoming increasingly agitated. 

    "I just can't.  He's gone."

    "Has he gone so far away that he can't even call you?"  She replied, brimming with indignation for her brother.

    He smiled ruefully and told her the truth.

    "He lives there." He pointed at the painting.

    She stared at it; then she stared at him.  Quickly becoming infuriated, she threw his hands away and stood up.

    "How dare  you fuck with me, David Guadalupe Rodriguez!  It isn't funny!"

    "It's not funny," he replied.  "I knew you wouldn't believe me.  That's why I can't tell you."

    "Why should I believe you?  You're telling me you're in love with invisible men who live in a painting!"  She scowled.  "You've fucking gone insane.  What did they put in those mimosas?"

    "Champagne and Boysenberry juice," he replied.  "Sit down, Mimi.  I'll tell you everything, and you can believe me or not, but hand to God, it's the honest truth."

    She sat down timidly, afraid of more of her brother's clearly insane lies.  She looked him in the eye and he spoke.

    "I've  been to the future," he said.

    "Ready to go?"  Anne Steele asked her partner.

    "Yep," Arwyn swallowed down the pills.  As it turned out, he did exist in the original time line, and he even worked for the force.  He worked in the archives.  Anne had worked out a transfer, and he had passed the Detective's test with flying colors much to everybody in the department's great surprise.

    She looked over to John and Bertram and they nodded as well. 

    With that affirmation they punched coordinates into their Time Travel Devices and disappeared to the 82nd century.

******

  Gerald Moxley heaved a sigh of relief the morning after he had restored the Knott's Berry Farm Restaurant.  He had woken up in his own bed, all of his equipment was back in place and as he opened his balcony doors he took in a deep breath of clean fresh air.  All was right with the world again.  He had proven his theory.  He made his way down the stairs and found the place disconcertingly empty.  His parents must have went on another diplomatic liaison.  There was a knock on the front door, which was odd he thought.  There was a key needed to access the lift to the penthouse.  He shrugged to himself and walked over to the peephole.

    "Who is it?" He asked as he spied four people standing there.

    "Police," John barked.

    Gerald swung the door wide open, confident in his lying abilities and that he wouldn't get caught, or if he did, that he would never get convicted.

    "Hello officers," he greeted them with a smirk.

    "No time for small talk," Anne growled at him.  "Gerald Moxley, you're under arrest for violation of Time travel code Article I section 42."

    "I have no idea what you're talking about." Gerald feigned innocence.

    "Save it, Moxley," Bertram replied.  "We have a witness."

    "What?"  Gerald was suddenly caught off guard.

    "I'm sure you remember Phillip Jones," Arwyn contributed.

    "Phillip Jones..." Gerald's eyes popped open wide.  "He's supposed to be in Chromia! or, or Earth at the least."

    "Funny," John replied.  "He's totally not.  Hands on the wall, mate."

    Gerald shook his head and backed away from them.  "No, no, no, he can't be.  He wouldn't..."

    "Rat you out?"  Anne asked.  "Why not?"
    
    Arwyn approached Gerald with his cuffs in hand.  "Gerald Moxley," he began.  "You have the right to remain silent..."

 
  ONE YEAR LATER:

    Bertram and John stood outside of the door to the modest apartment of Phillip Jones.  He answered the door with a sleepy expression that told them he had just been wakened from a deep slumber.  It took a moment for him to register who they were, and then he rolled his eyes at them with barely contained disgust.

    "Really?  What has it been?  A day since the last check?"  He pulled down the collar of the ratty old shirt he had been sleeping in and presented his shoulder implant for them to scan.

    "I swear I haven't been time traveling in the past few hours," he muttered.  "You can check."  He offered his shoulder to Bertram again who just told him to stop it.

    "Will you deactivate that thing already, John," he muttered at the other detective.

    John held out a device and pressed it to Phillip's shoulder. 

    "There," he said.  "Free to go."

    "Umm, why?"  Phillip frowned at them, completely perplexed.

    Bertram and John turned to grin at each other then let themselves in past Phillip and sat down at his kitchen table.  He joined them more confused than ever.

    "Well, it's been a long hard road," John told him.  "We confiscated the contents of Gerald Moxley's flat, but we didn't need all the evidence presented there.  We had your eyewitness testimony and enough of his notes for the conviction, not to mention that massive meltdown he had on the witness stand."

    Phillip couldn't help it when a small giggle escaped his lips. 

    "Yeah, so it's taken this log to decode all the crap on all his computers," Bertram said.  "And we finally came across the files he had for his chosen victims.  We think you'll find David Rodriguez's file of special interest."

    Bertram pulled out his trusty hand held and flicked it on.  He opened the file and paged through to the chemist's great success...a clean burning renewable fuel source.

    "What exactly did Gerald tell you about him?" John asked.

    "Just that," Phillip replied.  "He created our the fuel source that replaced gasoline and...that's it.  It changed the world and it's still being used today."

    "That's what I thought," John replied as he nodded at Bertram.

    "Did he tell you he had a partner?"  Bertram asked as he punched up another screen.  It was a newspaper article, and there was a picture.

    Phillip squinted at it disbelievingly.

    "That's not me, is it?"  He gasped.

    "It is," John replied.  "You're supposed to be in the twenty first century."

    "But..."

    "It happens," Bertram replied.  "Sometimes it's accidental, sometimes it's purposeful, but it happens.  I don't know why you would have gone there in the first place, before all this...maybe because of this, but the fact remains that this information was time locked by Gerald so the fissure wouldn't affect it. You know. It's one of those time things that makes no sense and can't be explained. It just is."

    "I was there whether he broke the time line or not," Phillip said.

    "So, you're free to go," John said.

    "Live your life in the 21st century," Bertram added.

    "What if I don't want to anymore?" Phillip replied.  "It's been a year."

    "Is that true?" Bertram arched his eyebrow skeptically.

    "Oh, god no!" Phillip finally let it sink in that he was going to see David again.  He jumped up from his chair and ran into his room.  He returned with his own TTD in hand.

    "You know that's illegal." John eyed him.  "How did you hide that temporal tech from us?"

    Phillip shrugged then grinned.  "Time locks are wonderful, versatile, things. So, you don't have any rules for me to follow?"

    "Don't be too brilliant," Bertram advised.  "But no.  Whatever you do there is what you're supposed to be doing."

  ****

      David was shocked when Phillip showed up on his doorstep one day with a smile and a suitcase, about one year after they had parted.

    "Wha...What are you doing here?" He stammered.  "You're going to get in trouble for violating the terms of your plea agreement. You have to go back. I don't want you to go to prison for me."

    "No," Phillip shook his head then smiled up at David.  "The deal is off.  They freed me."

    "But why?"  David asked, perplexed.

    Phillip stepped up to him and released his hold on the suitcase.  He wrapped his arms around David's neck and kissed him. David made no move to stop him.

  "To make a long story short," Phillip whispered once they parted. "It turns out that I belong here."