The Anarchists (22 page)

“You pick one.”

“Alright, I’ll pick the number five. No matter how many times you roll this six-sided die, it has a one-in-six chance of falling on the number five.”

Teanna made sense of what he said, even while weary, with impaired faculties and an empty stomach. “Okay, I’m with you.”

“If I fix the die on one side, the odds increase that you will get that five.”

“I’m not a bettin’ girl, but I’d take a fixed bet.”

“Of course.” Again, he grinned. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Wait. You an odds maker? That sounds borin‘.”

“Let me finish. Apply that concept to a person
’
s life
.
Everyone has regrets; things they want to change about the past. Given the opportunity to go back and fix a bad decision, would you do it?”

Besides her ex-boyfriend, the heavyweight, no regrets immediately popped into her head. “No doubt.”

“Not if your second chance had an 83 percent chance of going wrong.”

The explanation caught on. “Fix the odds ‘fore you choose?”

He nodded. “Essentially.”

She realized he was not finished. “So, what’s the problem?”

“The impossibility of time travel and, as with all gambles, your win is another’s loss. The house would not exist, if it lost more than it won. What would the betting world be without it?”

Now, the man did not make sense. “Not followin’.”

“Ecology, economics, politics, sociological studies – the change or unsettling of one unchecked factor could throw the entire system into anarchy.”

Like that, the stranger had drained all of the joviality and flirtation from their conversation and reduced it to a diatribe on consequences. It killed Teanna’s percolating libido which, prior to this conversation, had been humming along like an engine needing spot tuning.

“Somethin’ changes and destroys whatever – so what?” She snatched the die into her palm. The alcohol plus hunger made her flippant. “However the odds change, no one will ever know they caused it, will they?”

“If you can figure that part out, use this.” He handed her a thumb segment-sized gold disk with
Exodus Foundation
printed on it and returned to his reading.

She did not continue the discussion. His theory interested her in the silence of her thoughts. Teanna examined the die. He fired her up over the potential of a wild hypothesis and now it bothered her without further explanation. Chu left his seat for the bathroom.

Teanna crossed her arms and flicked on the in-seat HTV to a documentary about President Ramsey Mateo’s rise to power and recent inauguration. Mateo’s parents were native Mexicans, who fled to the US in 2009 as illegal immigrants. But, Mateo’s birth occurred on US soil and, by all rights, it enabled him to run for president. During the feature on his brief background as a grassroots representative in the House, Teanna dozed off.

She dreamt of a dark-skinned man, who said little but irritated her with his presence. Next to him stood an exotic beauty whose face blurred and phased into different forms. The ingénue asked for Teanna’s hand. Suddenly, the woman morphed into a drooling beast with jagged white teeth that repeatedly stabbed Teanna in the limbs with knives. Body rigid with fear, her eyes shot open with Chu’s disk and die still in her hand. She would look him up when she settled in at home. The disk felt rough on an edge.
Is it broken?

Over breakfast and for the remainder of the flight, she thought about her foreign companion, his rather wild musings on probability, and where he could have gone. They were in first class.
Could he have relocated to bother someone else?
She wondered, though, about the theory of six and pondered it all the way to the stop on the landing strip.

Still searching for Chu, she waited until most of the passengers exited the plane. Then, a stocky, chocolate man emerged from the rear of the plane with a container of garbage. Catering to commercial flight passengers was one job that still relied on human beings.

“Ready to go?” One of the plane’s stewards, Theodore Mitchell was pleasantly handsome to boot.

“Sure, Ted.” The redheaded stewardess attending the flight loitered at the front row of first class next to Teanna. She made eyes toward Ted, who indicated with a gesture that he was talking to Teanna.

“Think so.” Teanna giggled at the woman’s lack of tact. Finally on her feet, she could manage her drunkenness. “Excuse me. . .” she looked at the stewardess’ nametag.
Rhianne.
Teanna produced the gold disk. “A nice man, Miles Chu, was on this flight next to me. Did he move to coach? I ain’t see him when I woke up.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Rhianne said. “We don’t give out customer information to people who aren’t employees of the airline or next of kin. It’s a violation of privacy and protocol.”

“C’mon,” Ted argued. “It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I’ll do it for you.”

Rhianne stepped up. “Database check passenger first class or coach, last name Charlie-Hotel-Uniform, first name Mike-India-Lima-Echo-Sierra.”

“No passenger with that name traveled on this flight,” the database reported.

Teanna scratched her head. “Could he sneak on the flight somehow?”

“With handprint tech, DNA and iris scans, not likely,” Ted said. “Even the terror networks haven’t figured out a way to crack that code yet. Let me try: visual, row 6 Alpha-Bravo-Charlie-Delta; sweep forward, high speed.” Ted’s commands brought up a holographic display of Teanna swiftly loading her bags, sitting down, and intermittently turning her head toward an empty window seat. Both Ted and Rhianne snickered.

“You were served a number of drinks, Miss Kirkwood,” she scoffed. “Couldn’t you have ‘imagined’ that you were talking to him?”

“Yes, Rhianne, I imagined him,” Teanna said sarcastically. She held the disk to the redhead’s face. “He left me an imaginary card too. See it? Naw? Guess you can’t, ‘cause it don’t exist.”

“Do you believe this, Ted? C’mon. Someone dropped that in your seat, or it fell from your folio. It‘s not the first prank to be played on someone drunk.”

Teanna reared back and removed her earrings. “Heifer, I will drop you.”

Before the confrontation became more heated, Ted stepped between them. “It’s all settled. Miss Kirkwood, it’s time for us to exit the plane.” He put a hand on Teanna’s shoulder. “You may want to get something to eat before you head home.”

“Sounds good.” Rhianne positioned herself next to the captain. “The usual at the steakhouse?”

“. . .is where I’m going.” He eased away from the stewardess. “Alone.”

Rhianne stomped up the ramp and out of the plane. A perfect gentleman, Ted allowed Teanna ahead of him. Inside, she wondered whether he did so to look at her body. She made sure her coat remained in her arms so he could get a good look.

Teanna did not particularly like steak, but she would go to the restaurant too. If it meant having male company, she would eat a 16-ounce porterhouse.

Though the two went to the same place at approximately the same time, Teanna missed the uniformed steward. She chose a stool at the bar, as waiting for a table during lunch rush would take far too long for someone who did not even like steak. The bartender droid did not give her the spiel about the hand cut beef or how good the Kobe burgers were, which she appreciated. Chicken breast in wine sauce, rice pilaf and asparagus with a glass of pinot noir would do it.

Halfway through her platter, Ted appeared, spinning a strong whiff of musk into her nostrils. “Do you mind if I have a seat next to you, Miss Kirkwood?”

“Please,” she said, mouth half full. “And it’s Teanna.”

“Teanna, nice to meet you.” He set down a monstrous plate of chicken and steak nachos smothered in cheese before signaling the bartender. “My friends call me Ted. My family calls me Tiny.”

“Pleasure,” she said with pomp. “Aww, why Tiny?”

“I weighed three pounds at birth,” he admitted. “Obviously, it has no bearing on where I am now. Have we met before? I think we have.”

“I know. I look familiar; must got one of them faces.”

 “Bottled Yuengling? Thanks.” Ted said to the droid before finishing a few nachos. “I guess we haven’t met then,” he said, still chewing. “Sorry to talk with my mouth full, but I’m starving.”

She ate when he ate and, when he spoke, she finished chewing so that she could answer him or provide a retort. “Nice to have you join me.”

“Yours was my last flight for the week and I’m not in a rush.” He came closer to her ear. “If I’m being honest, I’m trying to avoid Rhianne, too. She’s been after me for the longest. Employees can’t date, but most do it anyway. It’s a good job with decent pay and I like the benefits. Not trying to lose my job doing something stupid. That‘s why I showered before I came down here. It’s the once place she can’t follow me.”

He showered. That’s why I ain’t find him. But he sure talks a lot.

“So, this Chu guy?” He shoved a few more nachos in his mouth – gracefully, but with obvious importance. “What’s his deal?”

Teanna retrieved the die and placed it on the table, explaining Chu’s lecture from beginning to end using the same scenario that he did; a human life. Ted listened intently to each detail, though he devoured food from his plate at the same time. She finished with her question and Chu’s dilemma.
If you go back in time, change somethin’, how’ll you know you changed it?

Ted drank his beer and did not answer, but the recognition and interest in his face piqued Teanna’s interest. “You look like you know what I‘m talkin’ about.”

“Hold on a minute.” He eased back, signaled the droid and pointed to his empty bottle. The machine raised its artificial thumb and rolled to a nearby refrigerator. “Chu’s talking simple chaos theory.”

“It’s
not simple
,” she argued. “What do you know about it?”

“So, one day in the college library, I’m bored senseless and I pick up this book. . .changed my life. It was religious, almost, like an epiphany. I understood it all. Kind of scary, really.”

“Uh huh.” She sounded skeptical. “Chaos theory, huh?”

Ted took two cocktail straws and laid them parallel on the bar ledge. “Let’s say these two straws represent different versions of your life. The first straw is what we’re living right now. You married, divorced, got kids?”

Teanna chuckled. “Marriage and babies? Never in the plans.”

“If you went back in time and had a kid, Chu is saying that you create a different reality than the one you currently live in. Say instead of being single, you got married to a guy named Ted and had a son named Luke.”

“I’d never marry a Ted,” she smiled. “Don’t sound like the tied-down type.”

He laughed and picked up the second straw.
“If
you went back in time right now, found a Ted and married him, you think you’d have a Luke?”

“No.
Yes.
I don’t know!”

“Chu said he could fix the odds? How? What’s more likely is you screw something else up. Messing with time is different than we think. Maybe you have a girl, twins, a miscarriage. You get divorced, he abuses you.”

Though Ted ate with vigor, the negative possibilities stopped her from chewing “Does it gotta be bad?”

Nacho crumbs dropped from his mouth. “It’s chaos – unpredictable, violent, chaotic. That’s the point. It could be good, I guess, depending on your point-of-view.”

“Do you even know the answer to the question?”

He drank enough to wash down his food because Teanna grew more impatient with his long-winded explanations. “I think so, but I don’t care what scientists say, it‘s not humanly possible.”

“What is it?” she interrupted.
If he don’t give me a straight answer!
Teanna gulped down the last of her wine, but clung to her glass.

“Assuming it’s possible, someone’s sent back in time and they make a decision changing the past – the only way they would ever know that they had altered anything is if they were told.”

Slowly, Teanna’s eyes opened with realization.

“Someone with knowledge of the original timeline and the altered one would have to tell them – God, in other words, or someone like Him.”

Teanna’s glass slipped from her hand to the ground and shattered into a dozen fragments. She knew the answer, and must contact Doctor Chu.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

January 28, 2050

“Where is she?” Harper’s surprise translated well across the three-way hologram.

Damario checked the time. “Landed at Metro Airport an hour ago.”

“Metro’s an hour from here with good traffic.” Quinne fidgeted in the bathroom: the one soundproofed room in the apartment and the lone place where Troy would not disturb her. “Sound the alarm and go get her!”

“You don’t get it. If I do that, she might run.”

“How you figure?’

“She pays with printed marks, doesn’t own a registered holophone, and largely stays away from public places. If she wanted to vanish, she could. . .and we need her.”

“Got an idea.” Quinne’s face brightened. “You a cop, but
we
ain‘t.”

Harper caught on. “And instead of driving, I have a hybrid helicopter at my disposal that will get us there twice as fast, if not more. Just say the word.”

“I’ll pick up Quinne. Meet you in 15.” Damario disconnected and dressed in plain sight, so that his wife would know the nature of his business. Though his vacation had ended, that did not mean Robinne would not fuss. She walked into the room and immediately stiffened.

“Nope. Not tonight.” Damario accidentally dropped his armament belt and she grabbed it. “You can’t go without this.”

“That’s not funny.”

She stuck her finger into his chest. “You promised me some alone time today, again, remember? Burgers on the grill, movie, Sweet Georgia Brown. . .any of this sound familiar?”

“I caught a break in the James case. I have to go. I‘ll be back.”

“I know how this goes. You won’t be back for dinner, or maybe even breakfast tomorrow. What were you talking on the holophone about?”

He sighed. “I don’t have time for this.”