Fiction Fragment Friday
This weeks story was written in bits and pieces over 4-5 writting sesisons. The original session I ended up dropping large portions of because the tone just wasn’t right and I was giving away far too much too soon.
I have a concept here much to large for this story. There are so many cool details about this system that I have in my head that didn’t make it into the story. I had to keep telling myself that no matter how cool if it didn’t tie to this exact story it didn’t need to be here. It is hard to cut those ideas though.
“Nothing is ever simple,” I said, taking in the sight before me. The line to the register stretched down an aisle. The warning alarm on my watch told me I only had ten minutes. There was no way I could check out and get back to my pod in under ten minutes. That shrunk my options down to a single, really bad one. I held the pile of books tight against my chest and ran.
The store alarms went off as I crossed the exit into the mall. Behind me someone was yelling, but I ignored it. Instead, I quickly took in the scene in front of me. I was on the top floor with the escalator to my left. It had a glass railing with cafe stye tables overlooking the lower levels. Two mall guards were quickly moving to cut me off while reaching for their nightsticks.
“Well, hell.” I turned using a chair as a step to climb onto a table. I leaped over the railing, landing halfway down the escalator. My legs gave way under the moving ground, and with no free hands, I couldn’t steady myself. It was a struggle to get back to my feet. To make matters worse, I was on the side going back up towards the guards. I had to push through people while fighting against the escalator.
“Lilly, start up the initialization sequence.”
“Oh, now you want to talk to me,” came the reply from my watch. Her annoyance with me was palpable, and I instantly regretted telling her to be quiet while I was in the bookstore.
“I don’t have time for this, Lilly. I’ve got mall guards on my tail.”
“You never have time for me. It’s always mall guards, police, or angry mobs chasing you. When you need something though, you never ask if I’m busy or not. Just Lilly do this or Lilly do that.”
“Would you please just start the initialization sequence?”
“Oh, I already did. You don’t think I want to be erased from existence, do you?”
“Thank you,” I said through gritted teeth. I had already dropped the award-winning finale to some young adult fantasy series while running. There was no chance to retrieve it at that point because it felt like I had the entire mall’s attention. I had to do something to put some space between me and the guards. No matter how fast I ran though I couldn’t outrun a radio. Two more guards were already at the door to the garage, blocking my way.
“Damn it,” I said, slipping into the large anchor store without bothering to read the name. I knocked over clothes racks behind me, trying to make it more difficult to follow, but probably just creating a clearer trail. My breath was heavy, and the only reason exhaustion hadn’t overtaken me was because the adrenaline of the chase overcame it. Thankfully, there was an exit from the store directly into the parking garage.
With less than a minute to spare, I ducked behind a dumpster and slid into my pod. Lilly had opened the hatch and closed it behind me. I snapped the restraints into place around me and put my hand on the biometric palm reader. “Go.”
Outside the pod, I saw a mall guard raise his nightstick. In a moment, he and the world around him were gone. Vanished as ripples in reality wiped everything away. My pod bounced in the waves, protected by its temporal field, but being pushed forward with the destruction.
“Lilly, do something.”
“You know, if you had gotten here on time for once, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” This time the voice came from all around me instead of from my watch. She sounded strained, despite being an AI that has no physical sensations.
I brought up my display on the inside lid of the pod and flew through menus. With my thumbprint authorization, I released all reserves to be used for stabilizing our flight. That was the last thing I could do before the pressure finally caused me to pass out.
I woke up inside my pod, sitting on its home docking port. I could see on the display that it was recharging.
“Lilly, how long was I out?”
“Negative sixty six million years.”
“Relative time.”
“Including disorientation, approximately three minutes.”
The pod hatch slid open without warning. The safety restraints apparently had been released at some point because I found myself laying on the ground in a pile of books.
“You know, one of these days you will learn to be nicer to your pod AI. She never dropped me on the floor.” I looked up at the elderly woman standing over me.
“Yeah, well, as Lilly likes to remind me constantly, I’m not you.”
Head librarian Henderson bent down and started sorting through the books. She compared it to a list on her tablet. “You’re missing one.”
“Yeah, I dropped it being chased by mall security.”
She sighed. “Might as well throw out the entire series. What’s the point in archiving seven books in a series only to leave out the last one?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t. Every word we can save is worth it.” She stood. “Still, it’s a shame. That version lost to us forever.”
“Any word on what caused this change?”
“Someone trying to make themselves famous releasing music that wouldn’t be written for another decade.”
“Seriously. People still try that?”
She turned from me, carrying my pile of books towards her desk. “They do. No one ever considers that the when, how, and who you know are just as important as what.”
“Wait, if they failed, how did it change the timeline enough to affect these books?”
“The idiot sued the real creator a decade later and won. It crushed all creative hopes for the artist, so they didn’t influence the author. Damn fool robbed the timeline of music, books, and the movies that would have been based on them. Actually, I’ve seen those movies. They weren’t that much of a loss unlike that book you dropped. Your brother brought them in ten minutes ago and he didn’t drop any.”
“Come on, mom you can’t tell me you never missed something when you were a runner.”
“Yes, I can, and if I missed anything, there wouldn’t be any evidence of it ever existing to prove I had.”
I looked at the list again on the tablet. There, next to a book I remembered my mom reading to me as a child, was the word lost in bright red. Now it only existed on that list and in my memories that were already fading away with time.