I am a chronocourier. I find, procure, and deliver rare items for customers, but not by looking through antique shops or digging where X marks the spot on a map. I travel through time. Of course it isn't that simple. The first time mankind succeeded in time travel, we discovered that not only was it possible to travel from one time to another in the past or future, but that we could also jump from one timeline to another. In fact, it proved to be nearly impossible to do one without doing the other.
The vast majority of people are not equipped mentally to handle hopping from one timeline to another. After a few jumps, the cognitive dissonance creeps up on most people and starts to mess with their perception, until they can hardly remember where they came from, let alone when. But we lucky few (are we lucky?) who are able, through some quirk of mind or anatomy, to leap across different universes without losing track of ourselves can make (really) good money bringing things that are common in one timeline to another where they're unusual.
That's not to say it's easy. There are a huge number of tiny variations that both link and separate different timelines, and I have to find my way back to the right one through a combination of technology, luck, and persistence. And bravery. I remember one time I managed to hop into a timeline where the orbit of the Earth was a few thousand meters further out from the sun. Thank goodness I made the jump during daytime, because instead of finding myself in a sudden rendezvous with some very hot magma, I suddenly discovered that I was flying.
Flying, or, as I discovered after a few seconds to regain my bearings, falling. I got to watch the ground get closer and closer as the computer on my wrist measured the differences between the timeline I was flying--er--falling in and the one I had been aiming for, determine which quantum fluctuation was needed to get away from that branch of the multiverse, and transfer me through a series of jumps that would slow me down, put me back where I needed to be to touch the ground in the branch I was aiming for, and get me into that branch without another shift. I got to watch as the trees and houses below me got uncomfortably large before I felt a series of gut-wrenching lurches and found myself laying on my stomach in the timeline I wanted to be in, with a hell of a windburn to show for it. Was it worth it, to risk my life like this? Considering the fact that I was the one person in a few hundred million that could manage it, maybe.
Considering the money, definitely yes.
My current client had wanted something that seemed fairly simple at first glance--a fertile Dodo egg. You might think it would be simple--just go back straight in time to when the Dodo wasn't extinct, grab an egg, and come right back, but the further you have to go forward or backward, the more likely you'll hop into a parallel universe, where something might just be different enough that... well, who knows.
His money was good, though, so off I went. Now, I don't know about your timeline, but in mine the Dodo went extinct sometime before 1622 A.D., so I needed to go back at least five hundred years from where--er, when--I'm standing. It's almost impossible to make that kind of a jump without serious negative effects in one shot, so I needed to split it into around twelve smaller jumps, making corrections as I went. Also, I needed to get to Mauritius, which would be another issue, seeing as how my current timeline's Mauritius was sunk under the ocean seventy-five years ago due to a massive earthquake. I guess I could rent a boat?
Boat rented, sailor hired, coordinates confirmed, I found myself looking over the side of the boat, with nothing but seawater in all directions as far as I could see. It's funny. I can travel back and forth through time and jump from one universe to another, and I still get seasick. I strapped a radio beacon to my arm, made sure it was getting picked up by the receiver on the boat, and jumped into the water. A couple of clicks on my timeslipper and off I went. I had pre-loaded the intended path.
I watched the sun flick back and forth over the sky as each small jump happened in turn. After three jumps, I found myself only a hundred meters from the now-still-existing (time travel does weird things to verb tenses) Mauritius island. I swam over and coughed the seawater out of my mouth. I glanced at the wayfinder, the little device that measures how far I've jumped in both time and between timelines. It displayed a larger number than I expected. I must have jumped a little further into an alternate reality than I had wanted to. I tapped the buttons on it to have it start analyzing my position in the multiverse, and it started clicking away as it separated out individual differences and organized them for me. I'm sure I looked a mess, walking out of the ocean on a warm summer day in regular, if futuristically weird, clothes, but I've discovered that people rarely ask questions of a time traveler. As the salt water dried to an uncomfortable crust on me, I wondered for a moment whether it was really worth it. But just for a moment.
I found a public library and got to a computer. There are a few changes you can use to get a rough idea how far out you are and which direction you've gone, and they're usually pretty easily answered on a computer with the internet. That's why I made this stopover in the early 21st century--computers were still available, and probably wouldn't be, or at least wouldn't be networked after my next jump. Flipping through an encyclopedia is much less efficient, though sometimes necessary.
Well, I had flown further out than I thought. Not only was Nelson Mandela not dead or alive, he (if you can call him that) was actually named Nathan Mendala and was a noted rock musician in South Africa. And that well-known book series for children about a family of bears had now apparently been written by Mercer Mayer, which didn't do anything positive for their plots, I imagine.
Walking back out of the library, I sat down on the edge of the street as my wayfinder kept clicking away. I was not very far back in time, but way further out in timeline than I expected. Bad luck on my part, I suppose. I would need to alter my course in the further time jumps to try and swing me a bit closer to the timeline I needed. The wayfinder could help me figure that path out.
I had just started to dry out and really enjoy that salt-water feeling when the wayfinder beeped at me that it had completed its task. I tapped away at my timeslipper for a few minutes, entering coordinates and confirming a bunch of changes. I would have to make the rest of the jumps relying solely on the wayfinder, which simplified things mechanically but always made me more uneasy mentally. I ran over to an alleyway, tapped in the final coordinates, and was on my way. Except that right as I leapt backward, some poor lady walked past the alleyway and looked right at me. Having people from the pre-time-travel era see you right as you jump is never a good sign, and it's not good for sticking to a particular branch of time, either.
One jump, and the harbor town was significantly smaller and more primitive. The number on the wayfinder jumped up again. Two more jumps, and there was barely any town there at all. The number on the wayfinder jinked downward. Four more jumps, and I got to watch as a line of trees further inland crept toward me in leaps and bounds. Once again the wayfinder number jumped up. I stopped here to replot. It didn't look like I was going to be exactly in the timeline I wanted to be when I found myself in 1600, my final destination, but maybe it wouldn't make too much of a difference. Only two jumps to go, and I found myself in a lush, wild jungle that was quite a ways from the timeline of my client.
But there were birds everywhere. They were kinda cool, honestly. You could walk right up to them and they would just stare at you dumbly and lumber away. I followed some of them and dug into the brush. Finally, I found one of their nests on the ground with a bunch of eggs in it. I shooed away the mother, who squawked at me angrily. I picked up one of the eggs, a smooth white oval, shined a flashlight through it, confirmed I could see a little baby bird in there, and placed it carefully in the little incubator box the client had given me. That would keep it warm and padded as I made my way forward in time. But it was a little smaller than what the box seemed designed for. I crossed my fingers as I closed the box. I just needed to avoid shaking it.
I walked back toward the beach and prepared my course for the return trip. Fortunately, with the course data on my way here, it would be easier to plot a proper path back to the client's timeline. Twelve more jumps in four sets, with another stopover in the early 21st century. I dialed in the coordinates, set the timer, and jumped into the water, swimming away from land, just to be safe. Five minutes later, the timer went off with an audible ding. I took a deep breath and I felt my stomach do a little flip as the scenery around me started changing again.
Fortunately, the path forward didn't fling me as far out as the path back. I made my little stopover at the public library and found that all the major things were as I remembered them. I jumped back out into the water and made my final two leaps back to the time (and hopefully the timeline) where my client was waiting for his egg.
After the last jump, I found myself about a meter under the water, which was dangerous because you never can tell exactly which direction is up right after a jump. But the air in my lungs pulled me upward to the surface, and after a few seconds my head breached the surface of the water and I looked around for the boat.
The glare of the sun hit my eyes, and I raised a hand up to block it out. I turned slowly, waving my hands in hopes that someone would see me. I checked the radio beacon and it still looked like it was working. I checked the little screen on the wayfinder and discovered that I was still a little off. But I figured I could probably fix it with a little jumping jack (in which I jump back along the path I had just come from and then hop back along a hopefully better path), so I keyed it into the timeslipper and there I went.
I hit my head on the side of the boat. Thankfully, not too hard, but I might have a little bump for a couple of days. I yelled, and a second later a rope ladder dropped by my right side. I climbed up, thanked the sailor, and we started on our way back to land.
My client was overjoyed to see me. I handed him the incubator and he placed it gently on his desk, opening it carefully.
The egg had spots. I don't think it had spots when I picked it up. Just shut up, maybe it's okay.
“Why does it have spots?” he asked.
My hand reflexively went to the keyboard on my timeslipper.
“That, I can explain.”
He ignored me and picked it up and looked at it lovingly. He brought a little device up to it that took a little DNA sample from the eggshell I guess, and then I heard the machine working.
After a few minutes, it spit out a flurry of text on the screen.
The client's face shifted from his pleased smile to a pronounced frown.
He looked at me. “This isn't a Dodo egg,” he said. “It's a Réunion Ibis.”
Is it? I was pretty sure the birds I saw back then matched the pictures of Dodos I looked up before I made the jump.
“Still extinct,” he said.
I smiled. Maybe this was okay after all.
“...But I already have one,” he finished.
Crap. I guess I was going to have to make another trip back. Was it worth it? I guess. Such is the life of a chronocourier. Sometimes the item you want isn't really what you want, because you didn't check your wayfinder so it could tell you that this timeline, this specific timeline, had swapped the physical appearances of the Dodo and the Réunion Ibis.
And in case you asked, yes, it was written in the logfiles on my wayfinder, when I checked later.
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Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my foray into some sci-fi that is a little softer and more irreverent! Recently I discovered an old fake ad I wrote back in 2013 or 2014 that had a similar goofy feeling to it: Uncle Gluon's Sapient Plasma Pets! Check it out, and see what you think!
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