As promised, I am giving away another free look at a chapter from my latest book, What It's Like to Travel Time: Double Trouble.
That's right! It's another Freebie!
Enjoy
Signed Greg Wilhelm, Author of The Pendleton Files and What It's Like to Travel Time.
Chapter 19
The Candaces arrived at their destination.
They were standing on a sidewalk that ran along a busy street. It was a block away from the Book Depository. Cigarette smoke drifted in the air from people walking by mixed with exhaust fumes from cars on the street. This was Dallas Texas in ‘63, the day before Kennedy was assassinated. Other Candace had set a target time for a day before the anomaly occurred without consulting her double. She thought arriving at this time would allow them enough time to come up with a plan. Considering how well documented the events of tomorrow will be, changing things back to the way they were without it being obvious they had intervened should prove to be a great feat indeed. Everyone having a story of where they were and what they were doing when it happens didn’t help matters either.
“Ok. If we’re going to work together,” said Candace. “We need to let each other know what we’re doing before we do it.” Right after she pointed out that a heads up would’ve been nice, she realized coming a day early was actually a good idea. Still, it would’ve been nice to know what date they were headed towards ahead of ‘time’.
The other Candace had accessed the historical archive routine to figure out their next move. “It says the real assassin fired his shots from the railroad overpass. Maybe if we go have a look around there, we might come up with a few ideas. We should probably approach it from behind. So we’ll need to go one street over and down this block.”
“I guess we’re really doing this?” Candace said.
“I guess we are,” said her double.
Fortunately for the Candaces, the weather was a pleasant temperature for November. They still hadn’t bothered to change their attire since they were “abducted” into their present situation. Things had been happening so quickly they hadn’t had time to consider it. Candace’s interview outfit wasn’t too obviously different for the time period but her twin’s clothes are another story. If you remember, this version of her was taken from a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Her outfit consisted of a powder blue pullover hoodie with La Jolla in big white letters across the front and black yoga pants with canvas shoes. Of course you would think that a young woman wearing such attire would stand out on the city streets of Dallas in the sixties. However, this was a time when everyone was starting to become acquainted with the idea of what a hippy was. And as luck would have it, most of those people thought hippies usually wore California style beachwear.
The streets the girls were following were less active and therefore the air less acrid. They had gone around the corner and about halfway down the block when the other Candace decided to ask, “Have you had the chance to explore the naNabots menus?”
“Oh, not you, too?” said Candace.
“What?”
“Why did you say it like that? You didn’t pick up his speech impediment, did you?”
“Oh,” Other Candace laughed. “Yeah, that’s not a speech impediment. Apparently, the company that makes the naNabots owns the rights to the second ‘N’.”
“What?”
“Yeah. They’re not nanabots. They’re naNabots.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Hunh.” Candace wondered if she had made any subtle derogatory comments about his “speech impediment”. She thought about it and concluded that she hadn’t, not out loud at least.
“So, have you?”
“Oh, the menus! Um, no. Why?”
Other Candace accessed her display and brought up the apps menu to show her. “Unless I’m mistaken, I believe these apps might be perfect for our needs.”
Candace was amazed. She had no idea the nan—“naNabots” could do that. “Have you tested any to see if they’ll do that?”
“Not yet.”
The Travelers arrived at the Candaces last known location but of course, they were nowhere to be seen. “Great,” said the other Traveler. “I really wish they would stop wandering off like this.”
“This never happened to me,” our Traveler said.
The other one looked at him and shook his head.
Our Traveler looked back at him, laughed and said, “Wait, I guess it did.”
“Oh, funny, ha, ha.” The other Traveler checked the readings showing a realtime display of where the Candaces were. “They’re headed towards the Book Depository. If we go down the street here, we’ll be able to cut them off.”
“Doesn’t it worry you what they might do?” said our Traveler.
“What?”
“You do know where we are, right?”
“We don’t have time for games. We have to go!”
Our Traveler grabbed his double by the arm and pulled him around to face him. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “But it was most definitely you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember? There was an anomaly here.”
The other Traveler looked around, trying to see if there was anything familiar. Then he remembered. The date! This is where I knocked that git with the funny name down the stairs. “You said it wasn’t you,” said the other Traveler. “How do you know about the anomaly?”
“You created the foundation of our dilemma by transfixing both timelines when you thought you were fixing your anomaly,” said our Traveler, and let go of the other one’s arm. “If they screw it up, your timeline will be completely gone. You’ll never be able to get it back. Didn’t you notice the dekyon field when you got here then? It’s a clear sign of a distortion in the space/time continuum.”
“Yes but it was gone before I could look into it. I assumed it was some kind of false reading.” The other Traveler was starting to worry. “Are you saying my timeline is the one that doesn’t belong at all? Once everything’s set right, it’s the one that’s going to go away?”
“It’s no big deal,” our Traveler said.
“No big deal?! But it’s my timeline. Won’t I go with it?!”
“You’re not going to magically disappear. You’ll be around in your own timeline, just not in this universe. It was an accident. We’ll stop the Candaces from changing things and then the timelines can fix themselves.”
“What? You mean I was freaking out about nothing?”
“Yes. It’s the rest of the world that change, not us.”
“So when they said, both of you cannot exist but they didn’t mean I won’t, they meant our timelines were crossed?”
“Oh,” Our Traveler laughed and said, “You must’ve been shitting yourself! Did you really believe that was their funny way of saying it won’t hurt a bit?”
The other Traveler found this hard to believe. He felt both relieved and stupid. Then he started to laugh along with our Traveler.
Then our Traveler stopped laughing and said, “We still have to stop them.”
“Oh. Yeah, right, of course.”
The Candaces were walking through the unpaved parking lot of a railyard, just a few feet away from making things worse. Across the lot, inside a ’62 green Impala, were a couple of agents who were working for the conspirators. They were in the middle of going over their plans when they did something they weren’t supposed to do. They watched two identical women walk towards them dressed in clothing that seemed familiar but at the same time not quite familiar. Because of this, the conspirators had missed a vital piece of information that will ruin their operation. About this time of day, on the hour, every hour, a security guard, posted there for tomorrow’s event, does a quick walk around.
The Candaces stopped. They turned to each other and said, “Did you hear that?”
“It’s not an alert I’ve ever heard before,” said Candace.
“I wonder what it means,” said the other Candace.
The two Travelers stopped in their tracks. They turned to each other and said, “Shit!” then started running as fast as they could.
“Well it must mean something,” Candace said.
“It probably wasn’t something important,” said the other Candace. “I’m sure it would’ve been a more annoying alert if it were.”
Candace wasn’t convinced. It was an alarm that meant something. Once again, without asking the question, the naNabots answered. “Oh no!” exclaimed Candace. “We have to stop!”
“What?”
“We have to stop NOW!”
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