remark, but hopefully they didn’t. The three near androids pointed their mirrorlike visors at each other again, dark reflections of reflections of reflections.
We walked back in silence. A siren occasionally rang out, but not nearly as often as they do in my current beat. A heart attack maybe, or a pod accident. We heard laughter and saw smiling faces through the ground-floor windows of new towers, more people in bars and restaurants, some of which I’d visited with my wife so many, many lifetimes ago. And at the same time, only yesterday. Grief is funny that way. Time stretches and stretches and you think you’ve eased into it, but then it snaps back at you and you feel you haven’t moved an inch from the moment you first heard the awful news.
A few days later, as I was preparing for this assignment, one of my superiors mentioned that Derringer “had been removed from the Department.” No one ever said what exactly became of him, but we could guess. It was a warning to the rest of us.
During Training, they crammed various theories into my uncomprehending brain, ideas on how time travel works, theoretical frameworks I supposedly needed to bear in mind as I muddled through my beat. The one I understood best was the Great Man theory. There are so many minor players scurrying about, and we all like to kid ourselves about how important we are, about our own impacts on the lives of others. We like to think we can change the world. But we can’t. A few can, the great men and women of history, and if a hag was to disrupt those life paths—if he was to prevent George Washington or Joseph Stalin or the first grand magistrate from being born—then history would tail off in an entirely new direction, not just an alternate path but a previously unimaginable one, foreign to what we see in our Perfect Present. This is precisely what the hags want. So they attempt to assassinate historic leaders, or they send themselves to major historic Events, turning points at which the very axis of humankind seemed to shift. Which is why a group of hags is running around in pre-destruction Washington, D.C., the very epicenter of the tectonic rifts that set off the Great Conflagration.
I think about this as I sit here in a neighborhood park named after a great man, President Lincoln. I’ve learned that he set this nation’s slaves free during a vicious war that pitted brother against brother. In the center of the park is a statue of Lincoln pointing forward, standing above a depiction of a cowering unshackled slave. What strange images these people celebrate.
I’m sitting on a wooden bench before a brightly colored playground of slides and ladders and swings and various other structures children could conceivably fall from. Toddlers and their older siblings climb up the steps and slip down the slides; they gleefully push toy trucks into miniature collisions and wreak other disasters, all while pointing excitedly at the life-size recycling trucks and backhoes that amble along the nearby road. Scattered on the benches are pale young mothers and darker-skinned women tending other people’s children. They talk to one another in various languages, or chat on their phones, pacing in distracted circles, or walk alongside their little ones, fingers extended to guide them.
So many people outside, reveling in their ability to let the sun shine on their skin, as if they know that their descendants won’t be able to do this. It feels funny for me to be outside for so long—I instinctively sit in the shade, afraid of the radiation that their atmosphere still manages to protect them from.
I spent the morning monitoring two of the hags’ next targets, but all seems well. Today’s Event is still a few hours away, so I decide to wander the neighborhoods.
“Which one is yours?” a young woman asks me. She’s pale as soap, wearing a shapeless green shirt over black jeans. Her unwashed blond hair is pulled back, her eyes are puffy with
We walked back in silence. A siren occasionally rang out, but not nearly as often as they do in my current beat. A heart attack maybe, or a pod accident. We heard laughter and saw smiling faces through the ground-floor windows of new towers, more people in bars and restaurants, some of which I’d visited with my wife so many, many lifetimes ago. And at the same time, only yesterday. Grief is funny that way. Time stretches and stretches and you think you’ve eased into it, but then it snaps back at you and you feel you haven’t moved an inch from the moment you first heard the awful news.
A few days later, as I was preparing for this assignment, one of my superiors mentioned that Derringer “had been removed from the Department.” No one ever said what exactly became of him, but we could guess. It was a warning to the rest of us.
During Training, they crammed various theories into my uncomprehending brain, ideas on how time travel works, theoretical frameworks I supposedly needed to bear in mind as I muddled through my beat. The one I understood best was the Great Man theory. There are so many minor players scurrying about, and we all like to kid ourselves about how important we are, about our own impacts on the lives of others. We like to think we can change the world. But we can’t. A few can, the great men and women of history, and if a hag was to disrupt those life paths—if he was to prevent George Washington or Joseph Stalin or the first grand magistrate from being born—then history would tail off in an entirely new direction, not just an alternate path but a previously unimaginable one, foreign to what we see in our Perfect Present. This is precisely what the hags want. So they attempt to assassinate historic leaders, or they send themselves to major historic Events, turning points at which the very axis of humankind seemed to shift. Which is why a group of hags is running around in pre-destruction Washington, D.C., the very epicenter of the tectonic rifts that set off the Great Conflagration.
I think about this as I sit here in a neighborhood park named after a great man, President Lincoln. I’ve learned that he set this nation’s slaves free during a vicious war that pitted brother against brother. In the center of the park is a statue of Lincoln pointing forward, standing above a depiction of a cowering unshackled slave. What strange images these people celebrate.
I’m sitting on a wooden bench before a brightly colored playground of slides and ladders and swings and various other structures children could conceivably fall from. Toddlers and their older siblings climb up the steps and slip down the slides; they gleefully push toy trucks into miniature collisions and wreak other disasters, all while pointing excitedly at the life-size recycling trucks and backhoes that amble along the nearby road. Scattered on the benches are pale young mothers and darker-skinned women tending other people’s children. They talk to one another in various languages, or chat on their phones, pacing in distracted circles, or walk alongside their little ones, fingers extended to guide them.
So many people outside, reveling in their ability to let the sun shine on their skin, as if they know that their descendants won’t be able to do this. It feels funny for me to be outside for so long—I instinctively sit in the shade, afraid of the radiation that their atmosphere still manages to protect them from.
I spent the morning monitoring two of the hags’ next targets, but all seems well. Today’s Event is still a few hours away, so I decide to wander the neighborhoods.
“Which one is yours?” a young woman asks me. She’s pale as soap, wearing a shapeless green shirt over black jeans. Her unwashed blond hair is pulled back, her eyes are puffy with
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