Paul staggered across the bright landscape, clutching his side, roughly dragging the hapless Terrian behind him and yelling at no one in particular. "Bitch! That bitch! That bitch shot me!"

The truth was that not only had Devon's first shot after coming through the nexus hit him (which was why he had run, he told himself), he was also exhausted. Damn those colonists! he thought bitterly. They were supposed to be a bunch of dumb yokels! He was Paul Baxter! Council agent with a big red "C" on his chest, super strong, super fast and el braino supremo. What the hell were they doing catching up with him like that? First they ambushed him near the top of the mountain. (Attacked by a pilot and a bureaucrat, no less! It was insulting!) Then they caught up with him at the cave, and then they actually followed him through to Earth! It wasn't fair, he thought sulkily. It wasn't supposed to have been like that.

Still, he thought, maybe he'd be lucky and he would get to see the colonists disappear in front of his eyes when he did the deed. Ha! Wouldn't that be something? That would teach that bitch to shoot at Paul Baxter.

After running a mile in ten minutes, he reached a ditch and gratefully collapsed into it before he even knew what he was doing. Boy, it was hot! He started to shrug off his pack, wincing at the pain in his side, and only then did he register the constant trilling and whining of that disgusting creature he'd put the shock collar on. He had only dimly been aware of literally dragging the Terrian by the arm behind him.

The Terrian looked to be in a really bad way.

He let it go and reached for his pistol, then remembered he'd lost it fighting the pilot and the bureaucrat. (The thought was embarrassing and filled him with shame. He would never tell anyone about that.) "Well, you sorry excuse for a person," Paul said to the Terrian, which was moaning away pitifully. "I can't kill you straight out, so I'm going to have to do this the hard way. Charge."

He gingerly shrugged off his jacket and calmly thought about what his next move should be while the Terrian suffered, noting that Devon's shot had torn open his pack and some of his belongings had been lost. He would have to deal with that. He repeated the command twice more, fully intent on killing the Terrian as soon as possible, and then a thought occurred to him.

What would he do when all this was over?

He was so surprised at his lack of foresight that he even forgot about the Terrian, giving it a slight reprieve. It had quite simply never occurred to him to wonder about what the rest of his life would be like, trapped on old Earth. He would have to do something, find some way to live the rest of his life in luxury (and he knew where to go to avoid the coming wars), content with the knowledge that he had done his duty.

He looked at the Terrian and had a brainstorm. He smiled. "Well, my disgusting little freak show, I have a use for you. Yes, I know it's hard to believe that someone as ugly and as worthless as you could have a use, but the universe is full of surprises. I wonder how much the science boys of this backward age would pay me to get their hands on you. Huh?" He smiled. "Yeah, but I don't have time for that right now, and I can't have your corpse rotting away before I can sell ya. So...damn, I gotta keep you alive. Oh, well. Them's the breaks. Charge."

The Terrian suffered again.

 

John Danziger, Devon Adair and Alonzo Solace slowly sat down on the grass, looking at each other in horror. "We're on Earth," Devon whispered.

"Yeah," Danziger said, looking again at the road as if it were a snake about to leap across the distance and bite him if he stared at it too closely. "Some time in the past, by the look of things."

Several more cars sped along the highway. None of the occupants seemed to be paying them any attention. "I can't place the period," Alonzo said, trying to keep a level head as best as he could. He was madly, desperately trying not to think about the horror of being stranded here, hundreds of years in the past. "The cars...I suppose if we knew when cars like that were made, we'd know when we are?"

Danziger shrugged and shook his head. "All those old gas-guzzlers had so many styles, and I'm no history buff. I couldn't tell you when we are."

"All right, let's approach this rationally," Devon said, trying to take command of the situation, and wondering how Danziger could remain so calm. But it was obvious that she was out of her depth. Her voice was shaking.

Looking at her, Danziger realized that she was feeling the shock now, whereas he and Alonzo would probably feel it more later, Alonzo especially. Right now, it just seemed so surreal.

"Our first objective is to go after Paul," Devon continued.

"Our first objective is to survive," Danziger corrected her.

"Paul has had a plan every step of the way," Devon argued. "Remember what we know about the nexus caves: they take you wherever you think of going. Were any of us thinking of old Earth when we were fighting Paul? I know I wasn't."

The other two shook their heads.

"So it must have been Paul who was thinking it. We're here because of him. Every single thing Paul did was with a purpose, and he has led us here. For whatever reason he wanted to come here, he has a plan, and that makes him dangerous. We have to find him." Then she took a deep breath and said the one unpleasant thing which they all needed to hear. "Even if it means we can never get back, our only objective for now is to stop him."

"But how are we going to do that?" Alonzo asked. "We don't know anything about where we are, or how to live. We don't have any of the money they used in this time, we don't have any friends, or any food, or any shelter, and no way of getting information." And no way of getting back! his mind screamed at him. He couldn't grasp the thought.

"Yes, but neither does Paul," Devon said.

"I believe I can be of some assistance with information," Zero spoke up. "I have been monitoring all frequencies, and I am receiving a great variety of television, radio, air traffic and police information. According to all of these, the date is Saturday, July 1, 2000, at 2:47 PM."

"Does that mean anything to you guys?" Danziger asked. Devon and Alonzo shook their heads.

"Zero, does this date have any historical significance?" Devon asked.

"I don't know," Zero said. "I am a labor and service robot. I was never given files of historical data."

"We'd need Yale," Danziger muttered. "He'd be useful right now."

"So what now?" Alonzo asked.

"That's just what we were discussing," Devon said. "I want to go after Paul as soon as we can. Danziger wants to ensure our survival before anything else, which could take weeks."

"Zero, where's Paul now?" Alonzo asked.

"I cannot tell," Zero replied. "We are in a vastly different environment from G889. The number of energy signals limits my ability to run resonance scans. Paul Baxter traveled beyond the range of my sensors over three minutes ago, and he was moving far faster than you could. Also, the population of the Earth is very large. I can detect the presence of any particular biped creature within a half-kilometer radius, but I could not identify the creature for you."

"Let's see if any of his stuff will help us," Alonzo suggested, nodding at the items which had fallen out of Paul's backpack.

They picked up a spare geolock rod, three food-concentrate wafers, a half-empty type 4 power pack, a data chip and a pair of socks.

Danziger was about to put the data chip in his gear set and activate it when Alonzo cried, "Wait!"

"What is it?" Danziger asked.

"That thing might have a scrambler," the pilot answered emphatically.

The method by which a gear set interacted with the brain was to send fake signals into the synapses, tricking the body into thinking that it was seeing and hearing whatever was programmed. Even simple messages worked this way, rather than as actual sound coming through a small set of speakers. With such an intimate level of interaction, the brain was susceptible to lethal commands coming from a booby-trapped data chip. These traps were called scramblers, for that was what they did to the brain of whichever unfortunate, unauthorized person tried to use them. The results were ugly, but they certainly worked.

"Yeah, and it might also have information we need," Danziger said. "And we don't have time for anything fancy."

"John, let's hold off on this for the moment, okay?" Devon asked, agreeing with Alonzo.

"I could read the data chip," Zero spoke up. "This would protect the rest of you from any harmful effects, and I could also start cracking the encryption which we will almost certainly find."

"How could you crack any encryption, Zero?" Alonzo asked. "I thought you were just a manual labor robot."

Zero actually hesitated a moment, which none of them had ever heard him do. "I was installed with certain decryption programs and methods many months ago."

"By whom?" Devon asked, although she had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"By Morgan Martin," Zero answered, almost apologetically.

They all sighed. "Good old Martin," Danziger said. "Okay, Zero, here you go." He slid the chip into the robot's receptacle under the chin.

"The data chip does not contain any computer viruses or mind-scrambling programs," Zero said after a moment. "It is encrypted with a Level 5 code. It will take some time to decipher it."

"How long?" Devon asked.

"Anywhere from one minute to two-point-five years," Zero replied.

"Well, be sure to speed it up," Danziger said. "Anything with an encryption that strong must be important. We need to know what Paul's up to."

"I am working on it as fast as I can," Zero replied.

"What now?" Alonzo asked.

"Now we need to find food and shelter, without raising any questions," Danziger answered. "I don't have a clue how to do it, but I think a city is a better place to find it than open countryside."

"Weren't the people who lived outside of cities supposed to be friendly, offering shelter to strangers, and the people in the cities afraid of crime and distrustful?" Alonzo asked.

Devon shrugged. "It could have been the other way around, but I think you're right."

"What we're probably doing right now is trespassing on someone's land," Danziger said. "If what I've heard is true, we could be legally shot just for being here. I say we hike along the road to the city, see if we can hitch a ride along the way. It's only four kilometers."

"Miles," Devon corrected him, even as they set off toward the road. "I realize we're in way over our heads, but we've still got to blend in with these people as best as we can, so let's use their system of measurement." She awkwardly stuck the pistol in the waistband of her slacks and untucked her shirt to let it hang over, wincing at the discomfort as the butt of the gun rubbed against her stomach with every step.

"How long is a mile?" Alonzo asked.

"As near a kilometer as makes no difference," Danziger replied.

"A mile is about 1.6 kilometers," Zero corrected him.

"Do you think this is such a good idea?" Alonzo asked.

"What, going to the city?" Danziger retorted. "That's what I just got through arguing for."

"No, interacting with anyone at all," Alonzo said. "What about the butterfly effect? What if we change history completely, erasing everything we know, the moment we stop someone in the street and ask for directions?"

"If the butterfly effect theory is true, then we're already doomed," Danziger replied without breaking stride. "And remember, Paul's here, too, and he's not going to care about the butterfly effect one bit."

"And he's got technology on him which won't be invented for another century, as well as an alien creature captive," Devon added. "If anyone sees that Terrian, history will have a lot more to worry about than the three of us. But we need to be careful not to display our own technology. Zero, that means no talking if anyone other than us can hear you. We need to say as little as possible to the people around us, lest we show ourselves to be strange through our ignorance. I think it's obvious that none of us were ever big students of history."

Danziger gave small laugh. "I remember telling my history teacher that I would never have a use for any of that junk."

Devon looked at him awkwardly, thinking that his laughter sounded just a bit too jovial for someone who had just been hurled across the universe. It wasn't the forced laughter of someone who was trying to cope, but neither was it the easygoing laughter of someone who didn't care. It was somewhere between the two, and certainly not what she would have expected from him. But she didn't say anything.

They awkwardly climbed the fence (none of them getting past the barbed wire unscathed), and started walking towards Santa Fe, awkwardly sticking their thumbs out at the cars which sped by.

 

Paul had had to threaten the Terrian with more punishment if it didn't shut up. Now it was quiet, and so was he as he crept through the ditch by the dirt road, forcing the Terrian to keep its head down.

Paul knew he was taking a risk by keeping the Terrian alive. His mission was of the utmost importance and the Terrian was a liability. But the creature was necessary for his long-term survival, and he felt sure that his superiors would have smiled in approval. It was a risk he was taking for himself, and with all he was doing for the Council, he deserved a few perks. And it wasn't like the creature could hurt him, for he still had the magical bones.

He and the Terrian crossed the road and climbed another low fence (the Terrian needing to be dragged over). They quickly made their way towards a moderately-sized rural house with a run-down shed in its back yard. The house was at an intersection of a dirt road and a gravelly, semi-paved road. There were several other houses in the vicinity, but no one shouted. A cat saw them, and Paul's heart leaped into his throat for an instant, desperately trying to remember what he knew about cats. He had never seen a live one before. Would it bark and raise the alarm for its masters?

The cat slinked into the safe, dark spaces under the back porch and looked out with glowing eyes.

Paul quickly forced open the rotting wooden door of the shed. It looked as if it were hardly used at all. He shoved the Terrian inside. "Stay here," he said, then tapped his gear. "If you leave, you know what'll happen. I have some arrangements to make."

He shut the door, leaving the Terrian mourning to itself in the darkness. Paul didn't bother glancing around – after all, what good would it do? – but took off immediately for the dirt road. Once on it, he slowed to a walk as if he'd been there all along and whistled his way into Santa Fe.

 

Alonzo kept looking around at the landscape. "You know, except for the roads, the power lines, and the contrails of the planes, this all looks really familiar."

"I know what you mean," Devon said. "I feel like I've walked all of this before."

It was small talk, they all knew. All three of them were panicking inside, fit to burst with the awe-inspiring task of facing up to the fact that they were stranded 22 light years and two centuries from everyone they knew and loved: True, Ulysses, Julia. The horror of their predicament sank in with every footstep along the hot pavement. Only their experience at overcoming adversity helped them to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

For that was how almost every bad situation was handled, Devon knew. Not in a whirlwind and a magical thunderbolt, but in tiny steps. One foot in front of the other. Her father had taught her long ago that some people recognized this and some didn't, and the difference was that the ones who didn't refused to see how their little steps were getting them anywhere, and so gave up in despair.

There was a flip side to their experience, however, and that was hopelessness. It was one thing to say, "I've handled crises a thousand times before, so I can handle this one," and another to say, "I've endured a thousand crises already, and I just can't take any more." And Devon also knew it was only a matter of time before both Danziger and Alonzo – two people with short tempers under the right conditions – felt the frustration and despair and lashed out, probably at each other, then later at her. She'd seen the pattern.

One foot in front of the other, Adair, she thought. One foot in front of the other.

 

"Car break down?" Angie asked the three hitchhikers as they stumbled into the shade provided by her fireworks stand.

"Something like that," Devon answered.

"Thought so," Angie nodded. She was a pretty dark-haired girl of about 25 in a white T-shirt and shorts. A red baseball cap let through a flowing pony tail in back. "I've seen a lot of hitchhikers in my time, and I can always spot which type they are a mile away. You three are the product of car trouble, I just knew it. I'd let you use a phone, but I don't have one. My mom keeps nagging me to get a cell phone, but I don't want people to be able to reach me wherever I go, calling me up and bugging me. You know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I do," Danziger answered. "I leave mine at home a lot, too."

Devon shot him a look which he pretended not to see, then asked Angie, "Do you have any water?"

She made a face. "Oooh...a little. My manager tells me I'm not supposed to give it out, because we're here to sell fireworks, not give out water. But I don't care. What are we here for on this Earth if not to help people, right?" She filled three small paper cups with water from a round yellow cooler with a spigot and handed them over. They gulped it down gratefully.

"How much further to Santa Fe?" Alonzo asked.

"Technically, about three inches. We're right outside the city limits because we're not supposed to sell fireworks inside the city. But really, about another quarter mile until you find a phone."

"Why can't you sell fireworks inside the city?" Alonzo asked.

"Because they're afraid people will burn down houses with them," Angie replied. "I know, it's so stupid. They can just buy them here and then go back into town as easy as you please, but that's the law." She shrugged.

"But what do people want fireworks for?" Alonzo asked.

Angie tilted her head to one side and gave him an odd look. Devon cursed inwardly, desperately hoping that Alonzo would catch the evil glare she was giving him.

"For the Fourth," Angie finally said.

"The fourth what?" Alonzo asked.

"The Fourth of July," Angie said, exasperated. "You know, the day we celebrate the birth of our country?"

Devon sighed theatrically. "Don't let him bother you," she said. "That's his attempt at being funny. He doesn't realize that no one ever laughs." She shot Alonzo a steely sweet smile.

Angie just shrugged, obviously not amused. "Well, the best way into Santa Fe from here is actually to follow the railroad. You'll see it just ahead. Turn right and it'll take you into the area where some car repair shops are. It's shorter than following the highway."

"Thanks, and thank you especially for the water," Devon said. "We don't have any money to give you, but we won't forget it."

"Oh, that's all right," Angie said with a smile. "Hope your day gets better."

"It should," Danziger said. "It certainly can't get any worse."

Angie watched the three odd people move back into the sunshine and trudge on, then got back to her cheap romance novel. She flipped through the book to find the spot at which the handsome stable hand was seriously thinking about giving the demure lady of the house a righteous roll in the hay – finally! – thus helping her to break free of the tyrannical life her wicked husband imposed upon her. But alas, it was not to be. The Unresolved Sexual Tension continued. With no one buying fireworks, Angie read on, happy to learn that in the next chapter, the lady finally invited the stable hand into the house under false pretenses. While the maid (who was the stablehand's sometimes girlfriend) kept watch for her mistress, the lady of the house swooned in his arms on the kitchen table amidst the sugar and the strawberries as the muscle-bound young hunk madly prepared to rip off her bodice...

"Excuse me," the man said, and Angie jumped. What awful timing! she thought. Couldn't he have waited a chapter? The blonde man standing before her was thin and wiry, and he must be a hitchhiker, also.

"Sorry to startle you," Paul said, "but could I trouble you for some water?"

 

Alonzo, Devon and Danziger had stopped at small diner to drink some more water and to ask for directions to a homeless shelter or to some other kind of hospice. The lady behind the counter had said she really didn't know, thus making it clear that it wasn't her problem, and they had walked on. Now they sat on a corner bus stop bench, watching people file in and out of the doughnut shop across the corner, and the workers in the car repair shop across the street, and the people filling their cars with gasoline at the filling station across the other street, and they wondered what to do next.

"It's a nice city," Alonzo said.

"What do you mean?" Devon asked.

"Well, I mean, my impression of old Earth was that the cities were all grimy and polluted and full of crime and gangs. That's what everyone thinks of when they think of the world before the Skylift. But this isn't like that."

"Not all cities were that way," Devon said. "The big cities on the two coasts of America, which is where I think we are, were among the worst. But this city seems very pleasant, very relaxed. Mind you, we've only been here a little while, but my first impression is that it seems like it would be a great place to live."

She bit her lip as the full irony of what she'd just said hit her in the face. She desperately hoped neither of her companions took the golden opportunity to lash out with something cynical.

But all Danziger said was, "You know, if I'd kept that special recall device on me, that little gift we got a few weeks ago, we could get some professional help for dealing with this time-travel stuff."

The thought had occurred to Devon, too. "Yes, but you didn't. You couldn't have known."

"What are you two talking about?" Alonzo asked.

"Nothing," Devon sighed. "Just something we picked up on our last adventure which could have helped us now, if we had it with us. But it's 200 years away, so it's not worth thinking about."

Their attention was somewhat diverted by a taxi cab sputtering quickly into the car repair shop across the street, hopping the curb as it did. A tall, thin man with jet black hair hopped out of the driver's seat, full of nervous energy. He looked like a 30-year-old who was desperately trying to pass himself off as a 20-year-old, and he wore a black T-shirt which read "Roswell" on the front, above the image of a distorted white face. On the back were the words, "I believe." He ran inside.

They continued sitting in silence. They were all exhausted after their run up the mountainside, the fight with Paul and the hike into Santa Fe. Not even Danziger was urging them to get a move on. The situation was so surreal, it had overwhelmed them entirely.

The Roswell-believer came back out with one of the repairmen, desperately appealing for something, but the repairman was pointing his finger, obviously wanting the taxi driver to leave. Some of their words reached across the street. "I'm full up today!" the repairman said. "You can bring it back tomorrow morning, but I'm not going to put up with any-"

"But tomorrow will be too late!" the taxi driver wailed, actually clutching his hair with both hands. "I need to be working today! You've gotta help me!"

They couldn't hear the reply, but the repairman went back inside. The taxi driver, looking like he'd just run a marathon, put his hands on his hips and looked around helplessly.

Danziger stood up.

"Where are you going?" Devon asked.

"To make a new friend," he answered. He waited for a car to pass and jogged across the street (ignoring the "Don't Walk" sign, Devon noted, making her wonder if it was a heinous crime). With nothing better to do, she and Alonzo followed.

"What's the trouble?" Danziger asked the driver.

The driver registered Danziger's presence. "Oh, man," he said. "My car won't run right, and I can't get any business."

Danziger desperately struggled to recall everything he knew about old gasoline-driven engines. The principle was easy enough to understand, but many of the finer points were probably outside of his experience. He would just have to try.

"Open the hood, crank her up, and let's take a look," he said.

The man climbed behind the wheel and did exactly that. The engine chug-chugged into life and sputtered along. Danziger grimaced, trying to match his knowledge with what he was actually seeing. He knew he would have to be smart and work fast. Something inside told him that this stranger represented an opportunity for help, possibly even a place to sleep for the night. The man joined him in peering intently at the engine, giving Danziger the impression that he didn't have a clue what he was looking at.

"Something's not burning the gasoline right," Danziger said. "Did this happen suddenly?"

"Ummm...sort of. It began yesterday morning and it's been getting worse."

"Did you do anything different yesterday morning? Make any changes?"

"No."

"Hmm," Danziger mused.

"I put in some new spark plugs the night before that, though," the man said. "Do you think that might have something to do with it?"

Danziger just nodded once with his tongue in his cheek as he began to realize that he was not exactly dealing with the brightest star in the New Mexico sky. "Yeah, that could have something to do with it, all right. Show me what you did."

"Uh..." The man hesitated wildly, then reached inside the car and said, "I took these wires out right here, like th-"

"Don't take them out now!" Danziger said, grabbing his arm. "The car's running. But...that's what I needed to know. Go ahead and stop the car now." As the man again sat behind the wheel, Danziger followed the wires back and his eyes caught a latch which wasn't quite closed. He guessed the part he was looking at was the point at which the electricity was sent to the wires which fired the combustion. "Hey, did you knock this loose when you were putting the...the plug sparks in?"

"You mean the spark plugs?" the man asked, giving him a quizzical look.

"Yeah, whatever," Danziger replied. "The new things you put in. Did you fiddle around with that at all?"

"Ummm..." The man shrugged. "I don't know. I might have."

Danziger worked the latch until it was fastened properly and the cap was on good and tight. "Try it now."

The man hopped behind the wheel and the engine roared to life without a problem. Danziger winced as he revved the engine pointlessly in triumph, blowing hot air into his face.

"Yeah!" the man shouted and leaped out. "That's fantastic! That's great! You guys are wonderful! How can I thank you?"

"Well, let's talk about that," Danziger said, putting his arm around the man's shoulders.

 

Paul sauntered along a nice, upper-class residential street as the sun began lazily to think about setting over Santa Fe. If anyone stared at his grimy appearance, he neither noticed nor cared. He would get a shower soon enough.

His information chip had been one of the things he'd lost when that bitch had shot his pack open, and it hadn't been lying in the grass where he had fought the others upon arriving in this time. He wasn't worried about them reading it (as if they could), nor was he worried about losing the information. He'd had it all memorized, which was why he still knew exactly where to go.

He found the address, 2313 Desert Sun Drive, and waltzed up to the front door. Beside it was a glowing button. He pushed it, and distant bells chimed briefly. Moments later a big man with dark hair, slightly brown skin and a moustache opened the door. He was dressed in a polo shirt and slacks.

"Mr. Jose Rodriguez?" Paul asked.

"Yes," Jose replied. "Who are you?"

Paul uttered a single sentence. Jose's eyes grew wide and he started to tremble. Paul pushed his way inside without another word and the door closed behind him.

 

His name was Carson Muller, and he was as weird as they came. But he'd been happy to treat them to dinner for fixing his cab. After biting his lip and thinking about where he should take them as if it were the final question of a doctoral exam, he'd finally settled on an exquisite eating establishment called "Taco Bell," the menu of which thoroughly perplexed the time travelers.

Devon struggled to place her order with the gum-chewing teenage girl, who obviously wanted to be anywhere else but there. "I don't know..." she was saying.

"Would you like a taco salad?" the girl asked, trying to hurry her through the line.

"What's that?" Devon asked.

The girl blinked at her and shrugged. "It's a taco salad."

Devon's patience began to run thin. "I am not from your country," she said. "What is a taco salad?"

"It's a salad made out of taco stuff," the girl said, obviously resisting the urge to add, "Duh!"

"We'll take three of 'em," Danziger said.

"Three drinks?" the girl asked.

"Uh...sure," Devon said.

The girl rang them up and Carson got three tacos, a large soda and paid the bill. Devon, Danziger and Alonzo let Carson go ahead of them, then copied what he did. The drinks were self-serve, so they had their pick of several, all of which looked the same – a black carbonated substance. They took their tiny trays and sat down at a booth in the corner.

"So where are you guys from, anyway?" Carson asked, flashing Devon a quick grin. Devon didn't miss it, nor did she miss the quick flick of Carson's eyes to her breasts before going back to his tacos. Devon gave a weak smile in return then sighed and looked away.

"Uh..." Danziger tried to answer. "Nowhere in particular. We drift from place to place." They noticed that Carson had unwrapped a straw and stuck it through the plastic cap on his drink, so they nonchalantly did the same.

"Really?" he asked. "Where've you been?"

"Um..." they all looked at each other. "We don't remember, really," Devon said lamely.

Carson's eyebrow went up a notch. "Wow," he whispered. "You guys must drop some really heavy stuff."

None of them had a clue what he meant, but Danziger just nodded and said, "Yeah, we do." Wishing he could find some way to derail the conversation, he took a sip of his drink and immediately spit it out. "Damn! What is that stuff?"

Devon and Alonzo each cautiously took a sip of their own drinks, and their reactions were the same.

Carson was perplexed. "It's root beer," he said. "Coke. Cola. Soda pop. What, you never had this stuff before?"

"Ugh!" Devon said, wondering if she would ever get the sticky taste out of her mouth. "No, I'm afraid we haven't. God, that's awful."

Carson's eyebrow went up another notch. "Just where are you people from?"

 

Jose Rodriguez nervously drove his SUV through the Santa Fe evening, following the dirt roads as Paul directed him. He was still rattled – seriously rattled – by Paul's sudden appearance and what it all meant. Maybe there really was a God and a Devil, he thought, and Paul was the Devil, sent to punish him for his crimes.

It was the only thing he could think of which made sense.

"Down here," Paul directed him, without even bothering to consult a map.

"Where are we going?" Jose asked.

"Shut up and drive," Paul said. "Yours not to reason why."

 

Maria Callabenos struggled to close the front door as Tony, her six-year-old son, ran into the house ahead of her. She wearily set her textbooks on the table in the front hall while somehow keeping the day's mail in her hand and idly flipped through the letters. She would have to get herself and her son something to eat, as well as mow the lawn in what little daylight was left before the neighbors started complaining. She lived in a rural area, but their properties were close enough that they were bothered when she didn't take care of her yard. And after all that, she had a test to study for.

The mail didn't cheer her up any. Three bills, but still no child support payment. She would probably have to file another complaint in court, as if she had either the money or the time. And what good would it do? All Andrew had to say was that he was unemployed and the government was powerless to force him to help pay for the life of the child he'd brought into the world. She couldn't use that excuse, but her ex-husband could. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair. Since when had it ever been? she wondered.

She pulled out a frozen dinner and tossed it into the microwave. Her parents would help, she knew, but she didn't want to go back. God, the shame, she thought. Still, what if Tony suffered because of her pride? It was the question she faced every night, and again she put it off for one more day.

Tony was running through the house with a toy plane making buzzing sounds. "I'm going to put a cartoon on and I want you to eat in front of the TV, okay?" she said. "Mama's got to mow the yard." She'd look in on him every few minutes. She never wanted to be one of those mothers who ended up on the 10:00 news because of a tragedy resulting from leaving their child unattended for too long, and he was a pretty good kid. Thank God for that, at least.

She could get the mower gassed up and ready while his dinner was heating. Her own stomach rumbled, but it would have to wait. She stepped out the back door into the warm New Mexico evening. Sighing at the fading daylight, knowing she would be mowing in the dark again before she was through, she pulled open the rotting door to the shed and found...found... For a split second she thought the light was playing tricks, but there was some kind of brown creature with a shiny metal collar and Oh God it was standing up!

She screamed.

Tony dropped the plane. "Mama?"

 

Jose and Paul pulled up the dirt road just in time to see Maria run hysterically back into the house. "Shit!" Paul slammed his hand on the dashboard so hard it must have hurt, but before Jose could even register what was happening, Paul had wrenched open the door and leaped out without even waiting for him to come to a stop. In seconds the strange devil-man had sprinted up the road, vaulted the fence and raced to the shed.

 

Tony's world slowly came undone as his mother burst into the house, broadcasting terror on every wavelength. "Tony, get down on the floor! Down on the floor right now!" She shoved him down and madly dialed 911. She cradled the phone under her chin and pulled the shotgun off the rack, then pulled a box of shells from off the top of the rack and loaded two of them with shaking hands.

"911, please state the emergency," a pleasant voice said.

"There's a man hiding in my tool shed!" Maria cried into the phone.

"Ma'am, we have your address already and a police dispatch is on its way," the voice said, but Maria wasn't listening. Through the back screen door, she saw a thin man with blonde hair run into her yard and take the strange-looking man in her shed away by the arm! She had no idea what was happening. All she felt was a rage.

She dropped the phone, ran across the room and whipped the door open.

 

"Shit!" Paul said. "Three more minutes and we would have been fine! But noooooo, the universe just couldn't cut me a break today, could it?" He turned to the Terrian. "And it's all your fa-"

BOOM!

 

Jose, watching in bewilderment from the road, just about wet his pants when he saw the lady appear in the back door with the shotgun. He couldn't react. He only had time to watch the flash and hear the shot. From what he could tell, she'd missed.

 

"Shit!" Paul shouted again, his voice rising to the level of someone who'd had a very bad day. "When will these goddamned bitches quit firing at me?" He immediately veered toward the front of the house. The woman with the gun would either have to go through her house to the front, or come out into the back yard and around the corner to chase him. Either way, he'd be long gone.

 

Maria saw the strange man dragging his even stranger companion around to the front of her house and thought about giving chase, but she didn't want to leave Tony, crying loudly behind her. She stood in shock, her heart trying to hammer its way out of her chest, her knuckles white on the gun.

She could have sworn she'd hit him!

 

Paul threw the Terrian over the fence, swung himself over, and waved for Jose to stop. Jose had evidently panicked at the gunfire and was driving past the side of the house now. Paul had no doubt that Jose would have just hit the accelerator and left him there if he thought he could get away with it, but he was too afraid of the consequences. He bundled the Terrian into the back of the SUV and leaped in. "Go go go!" he yelled.

Jose didn't need telling twice. He punched it along the dirt road and away from there as fast as he could, leaving behind a terrified single 25-year-old woman, her equally terrified six-year-old boy, and the recording of a shotgun blast on a 911 call.

Like it or not, Maria would make the 10:00 news that night.

 

Carson had seen some pretty weird stuff in his time, but these people were just freaking him out. They had no past, no plausible story, and had never had a cola. They had never heard of spark plugs, yet they knew how to fix a car. The guy named Alonzo carried a net bag over his shoulder everywhere, never letting it out of his sight, even though it looked to contain only a large, fancy, sealed white salad bowl. They couldn't agree on the kind of car they'd been driving when it had broken down, or where it had broken down. They had no money, no one to call for help, and no place to stay.

The easy explanation was that they were on the most serious drug kick he had ever had the pleasure to witness. But if they were dope-heads, why were they so clean and straightforward? They weren't undercover cops, he knew that for sure. But he could not figure them out. It was as if they had appeared from nowhere.

The thought excited him no end. And that Devon woman was a babe. He hoped she wasn't attached to either of the men, but she almost certainly was. He wondered if they'd share her. Did he dare ask?

"So what you are guys going to do now?" he asked casually, wondering if their plans could somehow include him. He had a sneaking suspicion growing in the back of his mind, but he didn't want to dive into it too much in case it turned out not to be true. But he wanted it to be true so much.

Alonzo just took a sip of his water (they had all gotten water, saying it was all they could drink after having nothing else for so long). He was completely engrossed in filling out the kiddie puzzles on the tray lining paper with the small packet of crayons which the restaurant provided, and didn't seem to have heard the question.

"Well, we were actually hoping that you knew of a place we could stay for no money," Danziger said quietly. Carson got the distinct impression that the request was very difficult for the big man to say, that it was killing him inside to ask for such charity. That kind of honesty was something you just didn't get too often, and in that moment, Carson knew he wanted to hang with these people.

"Well, there's the Tumbleweed Motel on Cerrillos Road, it's pretty cheap," he said. "But I don't know of any place that's absolutely free." Nor did he. He'd always supposed that such places existed – shelters for the homeless and whatnot – but he didn't know anything about them. "You can stay at my place if you want," he said, hoping the eagerness wasn't showing in his voice too much. "It's not big, but there's room to stretch out on the floor."

"We would be very grateful," Devon said. "We don't have any money, but if we did..."

"Yeah, that's okay," Carson said, holding up his hand. "Really."

"So, ah, Carson," Devon said, "what do you do besides drive a cab?"

"I run a club called the Action League for Information and the Exposure of the Nation. A-L-I-E-N. Alien." He nodded enthusiastically, perhaps with the tiny hope that they'd heard of it. "Well, I say 'club,' but it's really just me. I publish a monthly club newsletter, in which I do my best to expose our government's cover-up of alien landings, and offer proof that the aliens really are among us."

"Oh," Devon said, nodding. She didn't know what else to say.

Carson plowed on. "Yeah, the taxi job allows me to learn my way around Santa Fe and Albuquerque and be mobile. And I can set my own hours, so if a news story breaks suddenly – I got a police scanner in the cab – I can go there right away and hopefully snap a few pics and grab some evidence before the Feds sweep it all away. Plus it's good money taking people to the airport and back."

"What makes you think aliens would land here?" Devon asked.

Carson blinked at her. "This is New Mexico," he said, as if that would explain everything. He pointed to his shirt. "You know?"

Devon just shrugged, as if to say that yes, she did really.

"What if you have someone in the cab with you when your big story breaks?" Danziger asked seriously. "Would you dump the poor guy on the curb and take off?"

"You know, I've often thought about that," Carson said. "And I have to tell you, I just might do that."

Whatever reply Danziger was about to say was lost as his gear began to beep.

"Hey, you do have friends in the world, after all," Carson said with a smile. "Someone's paging you."

The Edenites just looked at each other.

"What?" Carson asked, picking up on their alarm and confusion.

"Ah, it's nothing," Danziger said. "No one could be paging me. No one knows me except the people here. It must be some random signal in the air setting it off."

"It is not a random signal in the air," came a pleasant voice from somewhere deep in the seat between Alonzo and Danziger. Carson stared in amazement. It sounded like the voice of KITT from that old TV show Knight Rider. "I was trying to tell you something vital to our survival without doing so out loud, as instructed, but you won't answer the signal."

Carson leaned over the table and gazed in wonder at the salad bowl in the net, which seemed to be the one talking.

"I was trying to tell you two things of importance. One, I have picked up a police report you might be interested in, claiming to involve domestic violence and an intruder with light brown, sickly-looking skin all over. The location matches the area into which Paul escaped with the Terrian. Two, I have deciphered part of Paul's data chip, and I thought you should hear the really bad news that I've discovered."

Carson remained frozen halfway over the table, his eyes flicking from one person to the next. The others sat without moving – Devon with her arms tightly folded and one hand beneath her chin, Danziger biting his lips, and Alonzo looking thoughtful. The crayon in his hand didn't move, frozen two inches from the end of the "A-Maize-ing Maze." None of them could meet his eye.

"Who the hell are you people?" Carson asked.

They all spoke at once.

"Traveling salesmen," Alonzo said.

"New-age missionaries," Danziger said.

"Television studio producers," Devon said.

Carson flopped back in his seat. "Do you want me to wait outside until you get your story straight? Would it make it any easier?"

"Look," Danziger sighed, "it's far, far too complicated to explain. But..." He looked at his two companions for support, then decided to take the plunge. "We need your help. Really, really bad. Zero says there's someth-"

"Zero?" Carson asked. "That's the talking salad bowl in the fishnet stockings?"

"Yes, the talking salad bowl in the fishnet stockings," Danziger confirmed. "He says there's something going on we need to investigate, and it's vitally important that we do so. Our lives could depend on it."

Carson nodded. "You need my help."

"Please," Devon said.

"And it's something that a UFO investigator wouldn't understand?" Carson asked. "Listen, you're face to face with a guy who was judged to be too kooky to appear on Springer. I mean, I've got references. So what's the scoop?"

Danziger scratched the back of his head, but Alonzo decided to give it a try. He was tired of the lying and sneaking around, anyway. "We're from 200 years in the future. We're settlers on an Earth colony 22 light years away, and we suddenly found ourselves transported back to this planet, in this time, this afternoon, with no warning. There's a guy out there, a possible killer who's also from the future, and we need to find him before he does something really nasty."

Silence.

"That's our robot," Danziger said quietly, nodding to the seat beside him. "His head, actually. It's detachable from his body for the sake of convenience."

"You're from the future," Carson said.

"Yes, we are," Devon said, taking a sip of her water.

"All right," Carson said. "I'll believe anything once. Prove it."

Danziger took out his gear set and put it on Carson's head. Carson experienced a quick moment of fear – visions of aliens using this as a trick to take over his brain flashed through his mind – but he remembered the honesty he'd seen in Danziger's eyes earlier when he was asking for a place to stay, and decided to trust him.

Danziger engaged the full laser VR function and sent Carson into a whole new world.

The UFO hunter sat there with his mouth hanging open. The remains of his last taco fell out of his hand onto the table.

"I wish we could leave him like that, but we can't," Devon said. "Hopefully, we can get him to take us to this incident Zero mentioned. This is already getting out of hand. Okay, Zero, what have you got from Paul's chip?"

"Nothing exact, I'm afraid," Zero replied. "Different sections of the chip have been encrypted in different ways, so only parts of it are becoming available at a time. The encryptions are very difficult, but the programs Morgan uses are really nice, so progress is being made."

"Yeah, that's swell, Zero," Danziger said. "What's the info?"

Zero hesitated. "You're really not going to like it."

"Tell us, Zero, or I'll feed you some root beer," Danziger said.

"The simpler encryptions were set up for his personal journals rather than for the details of his plan, which are more heavily protected," Zero said. "So his journals are all I have deciphered so far. Most of them consist of insane ramblings of mass destruction, Armageddon, and comments relating to Godhood. He often refers to Eden Project as 'the betrayers.' But there is a constant theme throughout his journal entries. One example reads, 'The betrayers shall be unmade when, with the tiniest pressure of my finger, I shall erase their blight from the universe forever. They will never even have existed. Not even God has that kind of power.' That particular entry was followed by 23 exclamation points. There are many more like that, if you really want to hear. All such journal entries seem to have been made after he broke into our logs and discovered the secret power of the nexus points."

The three Edenites were stunned. "Paul plans...to change history," Alonzo said. "He's going to do something to prevent us from ever having lived!"

"He's out to kill us all," Devon whispered.