Zeta Disconnect: Fetch (chapter 5)

5 Dec 2278, 2313 GMT / A military complex below Lewisham, London

Z-4Q woke on the concrete floor below the gate. The room seemed unchanged except that the air was colder, and some of the cables had been detached from the base of the gate. The gate was obviously still in operation at this time period.

He glanced quickly around for any sign of personnel, there was none. This made him feel confident. If he was wrong, or if he had failed, the organization would have sent several agents forward to capture him as he arrived in the new time. He took a moment to pull his PHUD from his pocket and replace it on his head.

Still slightly nauseated, he got to his feet. Right away he headed out of the door, and up the stairwell. The hospital above was silent. He switched on the lights in the store room, and looked around. He saw several small white boxes marked ‘first aid’, and he took one of these. He stepped quietly out of the store room door, and turned off the light after dropping the med pack into his empty cargo pocket. He walked down the hall, and past the night receptionist who was wearing a lighter, monocular PHUD. She looked up.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” Z-4Q responded with a nod of his head. She looked after him for a moment as he walked away into the dark outside of the building, before refocusing on her PHUD screen, and turning back to the paper-work on her desk.

Standing on the dark sidewalk of Crescent Street, Z-4Q looked up into the black starless sky and took a deep breath. This was what London was supposed to smell like. This was what he was preserving with his mission. He pulled down the boom from his headset, and then connected the universal plug back into the QSD.

“Locate any near-by quantum signatures that may have only recently arrived in this time period.” He waited for the PHUD to let him know that the wireless connection had been established, before winding the boom and multi-cable into the headset. His display quickly showed that the requested action might take some time. Z-4Q knew that his destination was at least closer to downtown London than Lewisham, so he pulled the goggles away from his face, and let them rest on his forehead as he walked toward the river again.

He glanced to his left, and spotted the police station from which he had acquired a bicycle earlier. It was strange to think of things as happening to him just recently, when they won’t happen for almost fifty years, or if he’s successful, wont have ever have happened at all.

What will happen to memories of events that never happened? How must it feel to have pieces of one’s life erased from the time line, as if they never were? If someone still remembers an erased event, then did it still happen? Is that why agents’ memories have to be erased after each mission? Or is it just that thinking along these lines for too long will eventually lead one into a kind-of maddened distraction?

Z-4Q shook the questions from his head, and resolved not think about them anymore. While considering these topics, he had walked surprisingly far along his path. He was about half-way to the river, and didn’t remember much of the walk. Had he traveled this town so often in the past that its streets were embedded in his mind? He looked around himself again to see if there was anything that he recognized beyond having biked past it earlier.

He was standing on a small over-pass, overlooking a dense neighborhood. It was bright in the neighborhood despite the night. High, bright lights illuminated the entire area, mounted on the same poles as the public security cameras. Many of the buildings were new, but there were no arcologies. Most nations, and all of the members of the European Union, had decided that Residential Arcologies should be allowed only in Industrial zoned areas. Fortunately for the people who needed to live in them, the World Clean Air Convention had been put into place twenty years prior to the construction of the first arcology.

Z-4Q glanced past the aluminum plated apartment buildings and shops, looking for the stone and concrete structures of his own time. Between two of the apartment buildings, he saw a stout, poured concrete shop-front. The store was plain and dirty. The door looked as if it had been permanently barred. There was a sign in the front window indicating that the sight was the future home of a new apartment building. The view made him stop. He stared at the building for a moment. He felt as if he had been there before, but was it true? Or did he just want o believe that he had the ability to remember something about his life prior to his initiation as a TCO?

He pulled his PHUD back down over his eyes and kept walking..

6 Dec 2278, 0516 GMT / Covent Garden Plaza, Covent Garden, London

Agent K-1T raised his PHUD onto his rusty blonde hair as he leaned against the metal railing, and surveyed the courtyard with his bright green eyes. “I’m afraid that someone may have followed us here, Zaq.”

Agent Z-4Q looked around, stroking his mustache. “What makes you think so?” he asked his partner.

“Not sure,” K-1T replied, “I guess it’s just a hunch.”

Z-4Q pulled down the boom mic from his PHUD. “Night vision mode with motion sensing enhancements.” He ordered casually, then to the other agent, “How long until we meet our contact?”

K-1T looked at his watch as Z-4Q wandered out into the courtyard, “Just about forty-five minutes or so”

“Not long until we go home then,” He looked around at the buildings, and especially in between them. Then he glanced up to the roofs. “I don’t see anything, Kit. I think we’re alone”

K-1T turned around and placed his elbows on the railing. He pointed his sharp nose down at the shops below the ground level and sighed a long breath. There was a dress shop, a candle store, and a teddy bear store. He found himself wondering why people would still need candles in 2278. Quite likely, they didn’t.

The next moment K-1T was turned back around. His right knee was on the ground. His PHUD was back over his eyes. A small pistol was in each hand, slowly moving to cover the courtyard. Z-4Q was on the ground face-first. His head in a quickly expanding puddle of blood. The shot had been through a silencer, but K-1T heard it, and instinctually reacted. He searched the area frantically with his eyes. The shot had certainly come from the other side of his partner, but he couldn’t see anything. Slowly he stood, still moving his guns, covering the area. He took one step toward Z-4Q, and stopped. K-1T had been shot in the left shoulder, and that gun had dropped to the ground. His bright eyes scanned the area frantically. He needed to find cover, but from what direction?

He made the quick decision to jump down to the lower level. He took a step back and made it seem that he was stumbling. He let his momentum take him back over the rail. He quickly turned in the air, so that he landed on his good shoulder. He had planned to roll, but didn’t make it work. He was not conscious.

A man in a skin-tight, black uniform stepped quietly out of the shadows, and slid toward Z-4Q’s body. Another, similarly clad, man followed suit from the other side of the courtyard. The first used a toe to nudge Z-4Q, and prompted a groan from him. Using a similar motion, he flipped the agent over, holding a small gun aimed at his torso. The second black-clad man bent over the limp form, and pulled open the agent’s black jacket. The second’s masked face looked up into the mask of the first, who nodded slowly. The second reached out to take the lead case, which the agent had been hiding. As he did this, his partner fell to the ground behind him, wounded in the head. The second looked up, and saw Z-4Q emerging from a small alleyway, still partially hidden by a large bin marked ‘Litter’ which was attached to the wall. The second looked quickly from the body before him to the agent in the alley. Hurriedly, he grabbed the small case, and spun on one heel, beginning to run, still crouched. As he took flight, he dropped a small blue device from his sleeve onto the body of the first man, who promptly began to shimmer and fade. The second dove back into the shadows he came from, while two more shots from Z-4Q’s gun danced past him. The man was gone.

Z-4Q stepped out from behind the litter bin, and moved quickly toward his own unconscious body. He looked upon the mustachioed face with a strange feeling. It was like he was looking upon a brother he had never met, and for whom he had an instinctual caring. He knelt at the side of himself, and touched his fresh wound with one hand, while he felt his stitches with the other. He lifted the PHUD off of his head, and heard himself moan, near to waking. He reached toward his boots, the same boots that he gave up at the bridge earlier. He raised the pant leg of the unconscious body, and lifted the plastic guard from the red button plate. He took one more look at himself, before he pushed the button, then quickly moved away as the device began to work. When the process was finished, he wondered idly how it was possible to save the life of one’s own past self.

After a moment, he ran over to the metal railing, and looked down. K-1T was bleeding onto the stones, and rocking slowly back and forth. Rather than use the stairs, twenty meters away, Z-4Q climbed over the rail, and dropped himself to the ground below. He stayed in the crouched position that he landed in, at K-1T’s side.

He pulled the small, white box from his cargo pocket, and opened it, dumping most of its contents on the stones. He began to treat K-1T’s gunshot wound. The prone agent woke slowly, and looked up at the face of his care-giver. He glanced at the stitches in Z-4Q’s face. “I guess I’ve been out for awhile,” he said meekly.

“Not long,” Z-4Q told him.

“Those stitches look awful,” K-1T forced a smile, “I guess you weren’t trained to field-stitch your own face…”

Z-4Q had just finished cleaning the wound, and was starting to wrap it. He hesitated for just a moment, as he realized what was going on. “Don’t bother trying to talk,” he instructed his patient.

“I’m a little cold.” K-1T said, “Am I going to be alright?”

Z-4Q smiled as reassuringly as he could, “I know one hundred percent that you will be.” He finished wrapping the injured shoulder, and helped prop the other agent against a nearby wall. He then took off his jacket, and wrapped the man in it.

K-1T pulled the jacket around himself, wincing with pain as he moved his wounded shoulders, “Thanks,” he said quietly.

Z-4Q looked into K-1T’s eyes through both of their lenses. Still he felt the green power behind them; it was a power that he knew would never fade. “I’m sorry, Kit”, he said sadly, but calmly, “You wont be able to go home this time. You have to do something.”

“My first duty is as a TCO, I’ll do whatever I must do.”

“Very noble, but this is a little tougher than a suicide mission,” Z-4Q took the Quantum Signature Detector from his belt, as K-1T stared at him, waiting and barely conscious. “You need to take this. It is already programmed. Use it to find the device after the enemy has discarded it. Put it back in its lead case and keep it safely hidden.”

K-1T nodded as Z-4Q paused to shift his weight. “I’ll be back for it in about fifty years. You have to keep it safe for me until then, Kit.” The green eyes just stared at him. Z-4Q couldn’t tell if K-1T was appalled at the mission, or if he was going into shock. “The future of Europe depends on our success,” He said, trying not to make it sound too dramatic.

K-1T was not responsive, so Z-4Q stopped talking. He reached down to the injured agent’s ankle, and lifted his pant leg. Then, he unstrapped the red button, careful not to activate it. He traded it for his own, putting the burned out plate on K-1T’s ankle. When he looked up, the green eyes were closed.

He stood, then, and turned away, toward the stone stairs that led back up to the plaza. He walked slowly, in no rush. He knew that he had nearly an hour until the contact arrived to pick up the device. As he reached the top of the steps, and turned back toward the Plaza, however, he saw a short man standing alone in the center of the courtyard. The man waved and smiled. Z-4Q began to walk in his direction. He recognized the man. This was the man who was supposed to get the device. This man was the target of the original mission. He didn’t bother wondering how he knew.

“Hello,” the man said casually, and in a strange dialect “My name is WaLiton.”

WaLiton was not just short. He was proportioned somewhat strangely. His arms seemed just a little bit too short, and his legs seemed just a little bit too long. His face was just a little bit too thin, and his eyes just a little bit too round. His color was strange as well. His skin was dark with a touch of green. His eyes were jet black. He wore a hat that was black and very tall, like a stove-pipe hat. His attire was recognizable as a formal suit, but it was of a strange material. Also black, it shone in the moonlight like it was water, but it wasn’t reflective of the images around the man. It seemed to flow around him, cut in such a way as to seem like the fabric was in a constant state of motion. It made for a very impressive display. Z-4Q knew who this man was. His name was Gra’k’ny WaLiton, and he was from the very far future.

“Hello,” Z-4Q said, “I know who you are.”

“Ah,” said WaLiton, “Good. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t.” His voice had an odd sing-song quality, as if he was perpetually reciting a poem with no meter. Then, when Z-4Q watched closely, his voice just barely didn’t match his mouth the way one would think that it should “The erasure procedures from your time are far from perfected.”

“You’re early.”

“Yes, well after watching what happened over there, I thought I should show myself a little bit before the schedule.”

“Very well,” Z-4Q said indifferently, “Here is your package.”

“Yes, this will be very useful” WaLiton’s smile broadened, as he took the case from the agent, “Thank you, Doctor”

Z-4Q started. “What did you call me?”

“Oh dear” WaLiton looked disappointed, and his frown was immense, “Have you really forgotten your days as a scientist, now?”

Z-4Q furrowed his brow, and nodded.

“A shame,” the small man continued, “You really were brilliant: The first and finest in your field.”

“And what was my field?”

WaLiton laughed, “Well, Temporal Mechanics, of course. If it hadn’t been for your research and experiments, time travel would not have been developed for another two to four thousand years.”

Z-4Q raised his eyebrows in disbelief, “My research?”

“Your research,” WaLiton confirmed, “Now, if you will excuse me…”

“Wait! Tell me one more thing.”

The man sighed, “Very well.”

“What is my name?”

WaLiton smiled once again, visibly relieved at the simplicity of the question. “I know you as Jonathan. Doctor Jonathan Zangski. Now, I really must be going… You understand, I’m sure…” The small man turned and briskly walked out of sight between two buildings.

Z-4Q was left alone in Covent Garden Plaza in the dark. Exhausted, he sat on his haunches, and then let himself fall back into a seated position. In a few moments he was lying on his back staring into the sky. He could see no stars. He didn’t mean to fall asleep there; he was exhausted.

Look for Chapter 6 of Zeta Disconnect (the final chapter of Part 1) next Monday on Short-Media. In the meantime, comment on this chapter in our forums.