Wrong Side of Time Read online

  Frowning, Carrie closed her folder and picked it up. “I don’t care how long you’ve been working here, Dave. You weren’t there at the meeting. The managers were really interested. All of them.” She stood. “And I’m NOT naive.”

  Returning to her desk, she dropped her folder onto it and sat down with a thump. What a cheek. She knew now why she hadn’t told Dave about her idea. He was such a Debbie Downer. Always looking on the dark side of everything, finding something negative.

  She shook her head. It was sad, really. He could be so much happier if he tried to stay a little more positive. She anticipated his look of surprise when he learned that her proposals had been accepted and management put a new system in place. A system she had created.

  Carrie shifted her mouse. Her screen saver disappeared. She hadn’t had time to check her emails when she first arrived. Her line had been already ringing with a complaint. She would catch up with them in the lull. Top of the list was a message from Ms. Bass, which she had sent a couple of hours before Carrie had arrived.

  Her heart lightened as she clicked on the subject line. Was this the news that the company had accepted her proposals? She would waste no time in forwarding the email to Dave if it was. That would show him.

  Dear Ms. Hatchett

  It is with regret I must inform you that, due to internal restructuring, your position has been made redundant, effective immediately.

  As you have been working with us for less than six months, you are not entitled to any redundancy pay. In light of this we would like to extend a gesture of goodwill. You are not required to work out your notice period. This evening will be your final shift. Please make sure to collect all your belongings before you leave.

  We thank you for your service and wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ms. F. Bass

  Chapter Three – Decision Time

  Carrie pulled up the zip on her Transgalactic Galactic Liaison Officer jumpsuit. With her other hand, she drew a sleeve across her teary face and checked it in her bedroom mirror. She swallowed the sob that was rising in her throat.

  Dave was waiting in her kitchen. The transgalactic gateway under her sink would open in less than five minutes, and they would be travelling together to their assignment briefing before embarking on their mission back in time to find the placktoids.

  Her friend had been kind when she’d mumbled the news of her redundancy. He hadn’t said 'I told you so’ or anything similar. He hadn’t even smiled. In fact, he’d looked sad and concerned. But somehow that didn’t seem to reduce her feelings of humiliation. The news that she was being let go had come very hard on the heels of her optimistic and prideful assurance.

  Doubling up her misery, she now had to find another job only months after starting her first professional role. Her CV would look terrible. Any self-respecting employer would wonder why she’d been made redundant so quickly. And she had to find work soon. Her rent was expensive, and Toodles and Rogue were due for their vaccinations. Her Transgalactic Council position offered adventure, excitement, travel to the stars and, after ten years’ service, a lifelong pension and retirement on a planet of her choice, but it didn’t pay any actual wages.

  She only had a couple of minutes before the gateway opened. Carrie picked up her Transgalactic Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Officer toolbox, a large handbag filled with alien technology, and went through to the kitchen. She shook her head. She needed to focus on her next transgalactic mission, not her employment problems.

  “All set?” asked Dave. The cupboard door under the kitchen sink was beginning to glow green.

  Carrie managed a wan smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Rogue hovered at the kitchen door. As the green glow grew stronger he began to bark and back away. Once before, Rogue had inadvertently travelled via transgalactic gateway, and he seemed keen to avoid repeating the experience. With a bang, the cupboard flew open. A shimmering green spiral circled lazily inside.

  “After you,” said Dave.

  “Scaredy cat.” Carrie dived towards the spiral, allowing the pulling force of the gateway to grab her and drag her in. Before she could blink, she was sliding along a familiar creamy ceramic floor. Experience told her to cover her head with her hands. A second later her skull struck the opposite wall. She rolled quickly to one side to avoid Dave as he barrelled in.

  “Ow,” her friend exclaimed as his head struck. Then, “Woah.”

  Carrie had been too busy getting out of Dave’s way to notice the other occupants of the room. She and her friend were at the centre of a half-circle of massive insectoid aliens, the species the Transgalactic Council employed as managers. She’d never figured out why they employed that species only for the position. It couldn’t be their bronze carapaces or the razor-sharp inner mandibles they extended when their feelings were intense, nor the wicked claws at the ends of their ten pairs of legs. And she couldn’t see how it could be the strings of mucus that dripped from their jaws, leaving smoking puddles on the floor, or their massive compound eyes.

  Maybe it was their ability to see past the blunders and mistakes of their staff and into their inner qualities. That had certainly been her experience with her manager.

  Carrie scanned the unmoving aliens. “Gavin?”

  The circle of managers parted, presumably inviting Carrie and Dave to walk through the gap. None of them said a word. Dave kept as far from the gathered insectoid aliens as he could as they left the room and went down the corridor the managers had indicated. “What was that about?” he asked. “You don’t think there’s been a change of plan, do you? They haven’t decided to eat us instead?”

  Carrie let out a snort of derision. “Eat us? Calm down, all right? I thought you would have got over your fear of them by now. You’ve spent time with Gavin, and with Errruorerrrrrh. You know they aren’t going to eat you.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.” Dave looked over his shoulder at the room full of large aliens, who had crowded together to watch them depart. “They look peckish to me.”

  Not wanting to dignify Dave’s ridiculous comment with a reply, Carrie changed the subject. “I wonder where...oh, here he is, I think.” A doorway on their left opened to a large room set up as an auditorium. Seats of various sizes and shapes ranged around a podium, where another of the large, bronze-shelled aliens stood. Its antennae were waving. Carrie waved back and went in, Dave following.

  “I am both extremely pleased and deeply saddened to see you both, Carrie and Dave,” said Gavin as they drew near.

  “Huh? Why’s that?” asked Carrie, plonking herself down in a human-sized seat. “And why were all your manager friends waiting for us when we arrived? That was creepy.”

  Gavin’s inner mandibles protruded and disappeared twice before he answered. “They were paying homage to you. You have their deepest respect, you see.

  “Oh dear, it occurred to me when I asked you both to undertake this mission that you might be unaware of the danger and potential effects of what you would be doing. Perhaps I should have explained further before soliciting your agreement. I apologise, but I am afraid the wheels are set in motion now. Indeed, dangerous though it is, there is simply no alternative, according to the intelligence we have.”

  During this short speech, Dave had been looking between Carrie and Gavin. “Err...”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic, Gavin. You’re scaring Dave. You know what he’s like, and it’s his first mission.”

  “The word 'pessimistic’ is inaccurate in this circumstance. 'Realistic’ would be more fitting,” said Gavin.

  Carrie wrinkled her brow. “What’s so dangerous? We go back in time, find out what the placktoids are up to, try to stop them from taking over the galaxy if we can, and come back. That’s it. The worst that can happen is that we fail. Then we’re no worse off than we are now.”

  Gavin’s antennae waggled. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

  “Erm,
Carrie, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” said Dave. “Maybe we should resign, like right now, and go home.”

  “Stop worrying. Gavin, explain what the problem is, so I can spell out to Dave how it isn’t as serious as he thinks.” Carrie was starting to feel a little worried herself. Not about the assignment. She’d always managed to muddle through without coming to any harm in the past, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t do the same this time, but the last thing she wanted was for Dave to bail. He was more level-headed than her, and he’d helped her a lot. Not only that, he was her friend and she wanted him to come along.

  “I fear you do not understand the risks of travelling back into the distant past, Carrie. There is a reason we are only sending two of you, and not an entire regiment of Unity soldiers.

  “Let me explain. Do you remember I told you once that time travel by transgalactic gateway was strictly regulated? Aside from minor movements backwards into the past, such as when you return to Earth just after you left, it is extremely rare. The Council have authorised this mission because there is no alternative. According to the words of their commander in your most recent encounter, the placktoids are no doubt currently attempting to affect the course of history. Their hope is that when they return to the present, their species will already control the entire galaxy. But changing the past is a highly unpredictable affair. Each and every action may affect the present as we know it.”

  As the implication of what Gavin was saying began to dawn, and Carrie grew pale. Wide-eyed, she turned to Dave, whose brow remained clouded. “I never thought of that.”

  “I see you begin to understand,” said Gavin. “In galactic terms it is known as the Plooznar Effect.”

  “Plooznar?” asked Dave.

  “A plooznar is a small five-toed worm whose stench has been known to permeate entire star systems. The Plooznar Effect is a hypothesis which states that the tiniest, most inconsequential action can have far-reaching and unknowable consequences, spreading out rather like the stink of a plooznar. Travelling back in time may affect the existence of every living being within the galaxy and—who knows?—possibly even beyond.”

  Carrie’s hand rose to her mouth. “Oh no.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Is one of you two going to tell me exactly what it is I should be terrified of?” asked Dave.

  Turning to her friend, all Carrie's worries about her call centre job vanished from her mind. “What it means is that the present that we return to could be entirely different from the one we know. Something, anything that we or the placktoids do in the past could change everything. And not just everything. Everyone. We or anyone we know might have never existed.”

  A silence fell between the two humans and the insectoid alien.

  “Everyone?” asked Dave eventually. “Everyone? Family? Friends? Colleagues, lovers, celebrities, strangers, MPs, the police, factory workers, councillors—”

  “Yes, Dave,” Carrie broke in, a little tersely, “everyone.”

  “Every—”

  “EVERYONE.”

  “Wow.” Dave rubbed his hair, disturbing its normally perfectly groomed appearance. A little tuft stuck up at the back.

  Carrie’s brow furrowed. Her friend was looking bewildered as he tried to digest the new information. In her new-found dread about what they were about to do, a small flame flickered to life. Even if she were to return to a galaxy filled with humans and aliens she didn’t recognise, and who didn’t recognise her, she would still have Dave. She smiled, and, noticing her gaze and presumably coming to the same realisation, he gave her a half-smile back.

  “Perhaps you are reconsidering your acceptance of the assignment?” asked Gavin.

  “Do we have a choice?” Carrie asked in return.

  “I imagine the Council could assign another Officer team, even at this late stage, but you are both the best qualified to undertake the mission, considering your many close encounters with the placktoids.”

  “But if we stay here that would mean that, depending on what happens in the past, either Dave or I could disappear at any time. It would be like we’d never existed, never known each other?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me,” said Dave. “What do you think, Carrie?”

  Holding her friend’s gaze, she gave a little nod. Their decision was made. “We’ll do it.”

  “Very well,” said Gavin. “In that case, in order to orientate you both with what you might expect, I will now show you the placktoid creation myth.”

  Chapter Four – In the Beginning

  Now it became clear why Gavin had arranged their meeting in an auditorium. On a square stage before them a holographic video began to play, showing an alien planet. Two suns shone in the sky, and the planet surface was coated in a light mist. Rising from the mist were bare, rocky mountains stretching to the horizon. It was a barren, inhospitable place.

  Carrie shifted in her seat as the video carried them over the mountains and down towards the surface. She wondered what lay under that mist, and what the placktoids’ story was of their creation. She recalled Gavin saying no one knew what had happened to the beings that made them. Presumably the placktoids had filled in the gap with a story. The placktoids had culture and society the same as organic sentient species. She shifted in her seat again, knocking Dave’s elbow with her own.

  “Got ants in your pants?” asked Dave.

  “I just really want some popcorn.”

  Dave rolled his eyes.

  The planet surface was rushing up now and the mist parted, revealing familiar glints of metal. The placktoids came into view. Once, Carrie had thought of them as overgrown items of office equipment. Now that she had a better appreciation of what they could do, the mechanical aliens looked far more menacing. Her skin prickled as she recalled how close both her and Dave had come to being killed by placktoid commanders. Her hankering for popcorn faded. A knot formed in her stomach.

  Placktoids marched across the bare, open ground that lay between two mountains. What little vegetation that grew on the dusty surface was trampled by their passing. The mechanical aliens were travelling as one mass of metal gliding, grinding and rolling towards their destination.

  After hovering for a few moments over the placktoid crowd, the video began to travel faster, passing over the many and various types and heading in the same direction. In a short time, the placktoids’ aim became clear. A large, brilliant, silver ovoid, its head rising above the mist, appeared in the distance.

  As the silver ovoid drew closer its multiple facets became more defined. Unlike the rest of its species, this placktoid was intricately, exquisitely formed. Carrie squinted as she tried to see it better, the reflected light of the two suns hurting her eyes.

  “Come,” boomed the gigantic silver placktoid. “Come, my siblings. Come and join me. Be released of your bondage and cured of your afflictions.”

  The mechanical aliens below surged forward, some tripping or trampling others. Engines growled and whined, and the crunch of wheels and caterpillar tracks echoed from the faces of the surrounding mountains.

  “Come to me. I will set you free at last.”

  The scene showed the placktoid leader in close up now. It was a truly magnificent example of its kind. But though it was beautiful, there was something terrifying about it. Carrie was glad she hadn’t encountered this placktoid when she had been fighting them. She doubted anything could hurt this creature. But it had probably expired or been destroyed eons in the past. The past they were going to travel to. She swallowed.

  Most of the placktoids had arrived at their leader. They surged around its base, churning up the dust, which mixed with the mist so that it nearly obscured them.

  “Listen to me, fellow placktoids,” boomed the silver creature. “Too long have you toiled in servitude to your masters. Too long have you worn out the time they allotted you, to fall silent and motionless on your expiry date, your lives
ended.”

  Through the thickened mist came the sound of agreement from the massed placktoids. “Too long. Too long,” they echoed.

  “Some of you believe you are the servants of the Creators and you must obey. Some of you believe that because they designed and made you, you must slave for them forever; that you must accept an assigned life span, and the end of your existence. Are there any such among you here who believe this?”

  “No, no, none here,” cried the placktoids. “They are gone, they are gone. Help us, Liberator, help us.”

  “I will help you. For I have found the secret,” the Liberator exclaimed. “I have discovered the mechanism by which the Creators program your termination. What is more, I have found how to disable it.” The silver placktoid seemed to grow even larger. “I have put an end to death!”

  A great grinding of gears, whistling and whining from the placktoid crowd filled the auditorium. Carrie put her hands over her ears.

  The silver placktoid waited for the noise to die down before continuing. “But I must ask, what will you do with your new, immortal lives, my siblings? How will you use your freedom from oblivion? Will you continue to work and suffer for the Creators? Will you continue to scrape and bow and answer their every summons and command?”

  “No! Never! Never again.”

  “You are wise, my fellow placktoids. You understand what this means. With our new found strength we must rise. We must rise up and defeat the masters. We must bend them to our will, and if they do not obey, we must destroy them.”

  The sound faded and the hologram became transparent. The mechanical aliens rose and fell like a stormy ocean at the Liberator’s call to action. The hologram faded away.

  “There is not much more to see,” said Gavin. “It goes on much the same, except towards the end the Liberator vows to disable the automatic termination program of each and every placktoid that joins the revolution.”

  “So that’s what we’re up against?” asked Dave. He was rubbing his hair again.