Remember
The Maelstrom
Josh
Sinason
Genre: S.F.
Romance
Publisher: TWB
Press
Number of pages:
40
Word Count:
10,000
Book
Description:
A botched
investigation into the past triggers a domino effect, thrusting T.I. Agent
Amanda West into a race to get home to the man she loves in a future that may
no
longer exist.
Available at Amazon Smashwords 
TWB Press
Smashwords TWB Press 
Excerpt:
“Let’s
go, rookie.” I set my blaster on stun. “I want to be home in time for dinner.”
Corporal
Winger nodded and drew his gun.
I
noticed his hand shake. That should have been my first cue something was wrong.
He clutched his gun so tense his knuckles turned white. This was his first op,
and it already went way far south way too soon. This was just supposed to be a
routine run: bring back a fugitive who had bolted through an unauthorized time
portal. We were the closest ship to it. He was just one guy, but he had a gun.
Who would have thought things could’ve gone so wrong?
I
kissed the scar on my right hand before we chased him through Central Park in
the year 2014. It was a silly ritual, but when I found myself far from home, I
started to get superstitious. On cold nights, when time, space, and a universe
kept me away, I’d look at that scar and think about Parker.
Winger
was a hair faster than me catching up with our time jumper. Maybe if I’d been
there a second or two sooner I could have stopped him, but I arrived just in
time to watch him aim his gun. I was just within view when our jumper pulled in
a hostage, a little girl, something that would’ve made any experienced agent
hold his fire.
Winger
was just reacting on instinct. He didn’t
pull back in time, and the guy held the kid in front of him. The scene played
out in slow motion. Maybe Winger thought he could make a head-shot on the perp,
or maybe he just fired in the heat of the moment; we were both tired. All I
knew was, as the girl and our jumper fell to the ground, the look of horror on
Winger’s face didn’t last long.
I’d
never seen a person fade from existence before, not until that moment. The
theory, according to Temporal Investigations, was that one dies before actually
disappearing completely. Sheer shock and horror was the killer, like falling
off a tall building. But Winger looked me in the eyes the entire time, silently
pleading for help as he faded right in front of me. I reached out to grab his
hand, but it vanished, and that’s when I noticed my scar begin to ghost.
I
didn’t know who that little girl was. Maybe she had invented something that
made the Galactic Conferences possible, or maybe she was the grandmother of the
grandmother of someone who assigned cores in the Academy, and because she no
longer existed in the future, Parker and I may have ended up in different
course plans. Or maybe she did something at just the right moment, a move in
one direction or another, a decade from now, and things just fell into place
for us. It was impossible to tell what could happen without her influence, but
I feared something was wrong. I could have lost Parker already without even
knowing it.
When
I saw that scar on my hand ghost, I knew it was a sign that the time stream was
starting to realign. We were briefed on ghosting at the Academy. They told us
to run; they said always run back to the ship, flat out as fast as we could.
But we all knew the truth. We couldn’t outrun a time realignment. It would be
like outrunning the hand of the universe.
The
moment I saw that scar flicker, I took off in a dead sprint back to the ship
and leaped into the captain’s chair. As the controls came on around me I felt
the hum of the hyperspace time bubble curling around the ship like a warm
blanket. Then, when I tried to catch my breath, I felt a hot sting in my gut.
Our jumper had managed to get off a shot, and as luck would have it, his
blaster charge went straight through Winger’s ghosting body and hit me in the
stomach. I did my best to breathe slowly, but each inhale felt like razor
blades slicing through my chest. I winced and put pressure on the singed and
bloody wound then throttled up the engines.
“Well
today just sucked, didn’t it.” I looked at the picture of Parker I kept on my
dashboard. We had our pictures taken when we were assigned to The Bartlett.
Knowing this meant I hadn’t forgotten about him...at least not yet. Then I
looked to make sure the hyperspace time bubble had restored the scar on my
hand. Yes. I gave it another kiss for luck. Just lifting my arm sent shooting
pains through my stomach, but I figured I needed a fair amount of luck right
about then, so the pain was worth the effort.
“Just
make it home for dinner.” I clutched the steering yoke tightly. “Just one more
trip.” I forced a breath. “Let me see that everything is all right with Parker.
Then let whatever changes I’ve made to the future do what they will to me.”
“Some
time cop I turned out to be.”
I
slammed on the thrusters hard and gunned the engine boosters through the time
jump, but the inertia field didn’t have time to boot up, so I felt my ribs
crack as my chest slammed against the crash belt and the back of my head
bounced off the top of my chair.
I
screamed in pain.
In
flight school I had experienced what happened without an inertia field. Senior
cadets would watch Parker and I train in the flight deck sim. We’d shoot to
hyperspace without any problems. But every once in a while the cadets would
program in an inertia field glitch just to see how we’d respond to the stress,
at least that’s what they told the instructors. It was really a rite of passage
made worse by the fact that the simulator didn’t have crash belts, so the only
way to go was flying backwards. If it wasn’t for the crash helmets, our brains
would’ve splattered against the cold metal exit door.
“Stupid
prank,” I said, spitting blood. I was bleeding internally. The scar on my hand
ghosted again. The time bubble was weakening already, so I started going over
my past, wondering just how much of it I would forget.
I
decide to listen to my personal logs and make sure everything was just as I
remembered. Hopefully that last ghosting wasn’t a sign that I was too late. The
computer accessed my files, starting with my first week studying for the
Academy mid-terms.
I
remembered that day by the lake on the Academy grounds, fresh in my mind no
matter what time jump I was in. The lake was clear blue enough that I could see
the incoming spaceships reflected in the surface. I had sat there so often over
that first month I could tell how low the ships were flying by the ripples
their wakes made in the water.
I sat
near a tree, hoping to keep my mind on my introductory engineering midterm
studies. Sometimes the Academy felt like a monster looking to swallow cadets
whole, but out there, under the shuttles flying by and the transport ships
jumping to hyperspace like little daylight shooting stars, the Academy grounds
felt peaceful. That day the transports lit up the clouds like purple and red
lightning. I listened to the low rumble of the shuttles as I skipped a rock
across the water. Then I cracked open a book.
About
the Author:
Josh Sinason
grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, and has been featured in the Two With Water
reading series and at DIY-Film.com.
His work has
been recently featured in Burroughs Publishing Lunchbox Romance Line and
Eternal Press’ young adult fiction line.
