"The Veil of Dreams" (Part 2 of 2)

 Story starts in part 1, posted previously (here)

Katherine’s coins were more than enough for Conrad to rent a room above one of the town’s numerous bars. As soon as he was alone inside it, he emptied his pockets onto the room’s tiny table and paced. Was what he was contemplating, he wondered, the only way? Probably not. But what else did he have the resources for? The matte black device that had weighed so heavily in his pocket reflected the oil lamp’s flickering light. It was a weapon, he knew, because he recalled practicing with it, perhaps in preparation for this venture. All he needed to do was hold the button down and touch the metal studs to someone, and it would - it would what? He didn’t remember that part. Presumably, kill or disable them.

That Dr. Greene had refused to return with him voluntarily weighed heavily on Conrad’s mind, but what was he to do? Neither of them were supposed to be here. It was an accident that had brought Katherine here, and another accident that had given Conrad the insight he needed to follow her. The second accident almost seemed to balance out the first, and it would - if Conrad could return home with Katherine.

Neither of them would remember much about this place anyway, Conrad realized. Even if Katherine were to resist him, once she was returned home all would return to normal. He wouldn’t even remember that he’d had to rescue her against her will. Not even his own conscience would blame him.

Resolved, Conrad retired for the night. His plan was simple and direct. By this time tomorrow, he would be home, with Katherine in tow, and this would all just be a bad dream.

The servants in the Gardner household were instructed to bring in the meal and then depart until called, but Margred and a few of the others still heard the commotion and rushed to see what was the matter. There was a shout from Mr. Gardner and then a thud and a scream, the last in Mrs. Gardner’s voice.

By the time they burst into the room, it was all over. Oswald Gardner lay crumpled on the floor, breathing shallowly, and as for what had become of the strange guest and Mrs. Gardner, they could see no sign, save that one of the maids spotted a wire-thin needle and a small glass bottle, contents spilled out, on the floor.

Margred ran to her employer’s side, and helped him get shakily to his feet. None of the staff failed to notice the pair of red burns on the back of Oswald’s neck.

“He took Katherine.” Oswald helplessly balled his fists, looking like he didn’t know whether to be more bereaved or more furious. “He took her back there.” As soon as he was able, he staggered to the corner of the room and retrieved a gold ring, Katherine’s wedding band, from where it had fallen when Conrad had thrown it. “And I can do nothing for her now.”

Dinner by firelight. Awkward conversation - fear? Panic? Anger, even. Screams. The crumpled form of a man, lying on a hardwood floor. Pain, sharp and sudden. All fading into all-consuming numb...

Conrad, Katherine semi-conscious and supported by his hand around her waist, recognized the intersection visible out the mouth of the alleyway immediately. What was odd was that the last thing he remembered was - no, it was the needle, in the isolation chamber. It was all coming back now - the theory concerning how the serum worked, which was half-baked at best, and more importantly the reason he’d injected it into himself, the rescue of the woman now leaning woozily against him.

Katherine, too, head clearing slowly, became aware of her surroundings and straightened, though a dizzy pain in her head made her lean on an adjacent building’s wall. She was dressed in a strange fashion - was that a corset around her midsection? - not to mention an impractical one, and immediately wondered how she’d been coaxed to get into the getup in the first place. At first she wondered if she’d been tricked into playing some sort of bizarre bedroom game, but no, the outfit was far too modest for that to be the case. The skirt came down to her ankles and the neckline was above her collarbones, held in place with a large button. Besides, she was hardly seeing anyone at the moment, if memory served.

Wait, no, that wasn’t right. Katherine looked down at her hands, not sure if she should be surprised to be wearing no rings or not. Wasn’t she -

The memory slipped away as Dr. Greene grasped for it. She would have shook her head, but the pain suggested that to be a bad idea. Something in her mind expressed discomfort at the idea of self-identifying as “Katherine Greene” - but why would she identify as anything else? That was her name.

“You all right?” Conrad asked, offering Katherine a hand.

“Umm...” Katherine rubbed the source of the pain, and found a fresh lump, as if she’d been hit. “I don’t remember. I think I hit my head.” She made the logical leap. “Concussion?”

Conrad shook his head. “Nope. The memory loss is... from something different. I have my fair share. Good to have you back.”

“Where’ve I been?” Katherine suddenly realized where they were. “And where am I now?” She thought back. The last memory she had was of the rats in the lab testing room, and of needles, and - and that was it. There was nothing but static after that, but she seemed to think that the testing room was some time ago.

“You’ve been gone three years.” Conrad replied simply. “Looks like my little gambit to rescue you worked.”

“Rescue?” Katherine frowned. “Where’d I go? Was I a hostage?”

“I’m not quite sure.” Conrad gestured to the dress. “Why don’t we deal with this first?”

Katherine, confused, still managed to refuse. “I can stand to be dressed like this for a little while. Besides, if I’ve been gone three years, I don’t have an apartment to change in or clothes to put on anymore.” Katherine’s parents were dead, and she was an only child - she wondered briefly where they’d sent her belongings. Three years? Intellectually, it didn’t make sense, but the memory of the lab did have the correct distance about it. What had happened in between?

Conrad shrugged. “All right. To the lab, then. I’ll explain there.” He exited the alley to hail a cab, leaving Katherine to herself.

Katherine massaged the bump on her head, which still hurt. It seemed to be a fresh injury, and it felt as if she’d hit her head only minutes before, but she had no memory of doing so. Even so much as trying to think back to before finding herself woozily leaning against Konrad in this alley was impossible - it was like trying to recall a dream too long after waking. There was only a fuzzy nothing. Katherine was intrigued, but also a little scared - she had never before had such a large section of her memories simply wiped away. She was always so good at remembering, that this was an entirely unpleasant development.

Her last memory, barring a dreamlike hazy scene that might have been a hospital, was of working in the lab, injecting the new compound into rats to test its effects. It was a rather unremarkable memory, which simply faded into the fuzz.

No. Katherine squeezed her eyes shut. There was something else. The last rat was squirming more than the rest, and she’d slipped. The last thing that she remembered was of the needle plunging toward the back of her own hand as the rat made a last-ditch effort to escape it.

Katherine’s head hurt too much to wonder what the serum had done, and Conrad had promised to explain, so she left it at that, for the moment.

A brief taxi ride took the pair to the lab, and Conrad left Katherine with the cab while he ran inside to fetch some cash (his wallet, apparently, was not with him when they came to the alley, however they came to do that. The driver was clearly curious about Katherine’s “costume”, but was polite enough not to ask.

Conrad returned, and escorted Katherine inside. The lab was just getting ready to lock up for the night, but even those members of the staff that had already gone home were summoned to the building’s one conference room for Conrad’s explanation, which he promised would be valuable and that represented a sort of breakthrough. Katherine was greeted with awkward relief by her co-workers, who had probably decided she was dead years before. The new staff, most of whom had probably heard of the mystery of the disappearance of Dr. Greene, greeted her cordially, excitedly, only a little less awkwardly. Apparently, she’d become a bit of a minor celebrity after vanishing from the lab.

Mary Ellen, the new lab tech, even had a change of clothes that would fit Katherine in her clean room locker. With relief, Dr. Green retired to one of the restrooms to disassemble the awkward costume in which she was dressed. This was a more involved process than she thought it would be - the getup was probably designed to be removed with help (which put Katherine back to thinking it might be related to some bizarre bedroom game). Still, Katherine was able to get out of the dress and into more normal clothes: sweat pants and a tee shirt.

Folding up the pieces of the out-of-place dress, though, Katherine heard something crinkle, like paper. She quickly located a pocket inside the outer blouse, which contained a thick envelope of a beautiful cream color, the kind that she thought might be used for formal wedding invitations and the like. It was unmarked, save for a single swooping handwritten word on the back: Katherine. The letters were archaic, but she strangely was able to read them as if they were perfectly normal. It was sealed not with the usual method but with a blot of red wax.

Curious, and suspecting the envelope to be a link to the enigmatic period her memory knew only as fuzz and fog, Katherine broke the wax and opened the top.

Inside, folded in a double layer of waxy paper, was a letter, penned in the same hand as had written her name on the outside.

Katherine, my beloved wife:

I cannot assume that you remember me in reading this missive, or that anything I say here will help you to remember. That you are reading means that you have been taken from me, back to that place from which you came into my life, and I can only assume that you were taken against your will by some greater force.

You promised me once that if you had a choice, you would choose to return, that you would prefer that our marriage would be permanent despite the barrier of forgetting that lies between your world and mine. I have no power to enforce that promise, and do not want to force your return out of feelings of obligation. I would hope that some shred of me remains in your memory, that our years of marriage have not faded entirely from your mind. But even that I cannot assume.

I would wait for you forever, if it took that long for you to find your way back, but I hope and pray with every hour that you are gone that the next will see you returned to me. But if the world you find yourself in bears wonders so great or duties so pressing that what we have must wait, I will understand, and ask for no explanations when you return. For I know that there can be none.

Until next you pass through the veil of dreams and return to my waiting arms, may God watch over you and keep you well.

Yours forever,

Oswald.

Katherine, reading the note, did not have a flood of returning memories, but she knew that every word on the page was true. The name “Oswald” conjured up the image of a handsome man of about thirty-five, average height and build, with clever, dark eyes. The handwriting was as familiar to her as her own, though it was archaic - she should have had to pause to decipher some of the more difficult penmanship, were the writer truly a stranger.

That she wasn’t a hostage wherever she’d been was becoming clear, but then why had Conrad brought her back? Had she elected to return, knowing about the letter in her pocket? She rubbed the aching bruise on her head reflexively, and then stopped, realizing that it might be related. Had Conrad abducted her to bring her back here?

Katherine knew immediately that Conrad himself no longer knew. Still, she folded the letter up and stuck it in the pocket of her borrowed sweat pants, and left the bathroom, leaving the bundle of clothes. Rather than head back toward Conrad’s growing audience in the conference room, where he promised to explain how the serum that Katherine had been exposed to worked, she headed in the opposite direction, a plan in mind. Katherine could not trust Conrad, no, but neither was she entirely ready to trust Oswald, who she remembered only in small pieces, if favorably.

Conrad waited ten minutes longer than he thought reasonable for Katherine, but she did not return. Still, he did not start, having promised her an explanation. At twelve minutes, he sent Mary Ellen to check on Katherine’s progress. The rest of the room, some summoned from dinner with families, looked agitated, annoyed, but excited that what Conrad had promised them might be true. He knew he could keep them there for a little while longer, because what he was going to tell them would be worth the wait.

Mary Ellen knocked on the bathroom door gently, then harder when there was no answer. “Dr. Green, I know you’ve been through a lot, but Conad won’t start without you.” She waited to a count of five. No answer. Wondering if Dr. Green was all right, Mary Ellen pushed through the door. “Dr Green, are you - ”

The bathroom was empty, save for a few sheets of what looked like butcher’s paper rustling on the floor, and the bag which Mary Ellen’s own spare set of clothes had been kept. With a frown, the lab tech returned to the hall, looking in both directions. Dr. Green hadn’t made it to the conference room, and wasn’t here, so logically she’d gone the other way - perhaps she didn’t know her way around. After all, Mary Ellen reasoned, she hadn’t been here in over three years. With a sigh, the woman started off away from the conference room, hoping that she could find the wayward PhD before too long.

Katherine set down the armload of assorted things she’d been carrying, then turned to close and lock the door. The building’s labs had no locks, but the offices did, and Katherine had found that the security code for her old office (now reassigned to someone else) had not changed. She paused to make sure she had everything - a flash disk, a pair of fresh hypodermic needles, pen, notepad, and all of the lab’s samples of the old compound - the one Katherine had accidentally exposed herself to three years ago - and all she could find of the new one, Conrad’s return serum. Apparently, the rat trial hadn’t gone well, and it had been abandoned, until she’d briefly reappeared a few weeks ago.

Katherine began writing fervently on the notepad, writing down everything she could think of about herself that she wanted to remember. She was surprised to barely come up with three quarters of a page.

Next, she moved to the office’s computer. It accepted her credentials immediately, though it insisted that her password was expired and needed to be changed. Katherine immediately opened a connection to the data server and located Dr. Pazio’s research notes relating to the two compounds. Rather than read them, she sent a “delete” command.

The computer rejected the command, and Katherine cursed softly. Of course, research notes were meant to be permanent, and could not be deleted or altered, only appended to. She thought hard for a moment, before realizing that her account had, three years ago, had access to do a bit more than was probably safe, courtesy of shoddy IT work.

Katherine, hoping that the loophole in security hadn’t been corrected, typed in the command to reformat the server’s hard drive. It paused for a moment, then asked for confirmation, and Katherine knew she had her answer. Except that there were backups, on servers that did not have this loophole. Katherine, not being a security expert (knowing only a bit more than average about the lab computers when she had been taken from here), knew she couldn’t crack open the backups.

Katherine left the computer at the confirmation stage and sat there for a moment, wondering what to do about that rogue data in the backups, until she realized that they wouldn’t be delete-protected like the main server. A quick few commands later, they were gone, and the only thing left was the confirmation on the main server.

Katherine took the time to save the files to the flash disk she’d grabbed and then, after only a moment’s hesitation, confirmed the command, and the server in the basement began to self-destruct.

There was a flash of movement in the little window on the door, causing Katherine to look up. As she did, it returned - the new lab tech, Mary Ellen, walking swiftly around, looking for her. As she looked up, Katherine’s eyes locked with the tech’s, and Mary Ellen turned toward the office door. She seemed genuinely surprised to find it locked.

“Dr. Greene, open up!” She pounded on the glass. “Everyone’s waiting!”

Katherine didn’t answer. She wondered if the name “Dr. Greene” was even hers anymore, or if she’d taken her husband’s name, as she gathered up all of her things but one of the bottles and one needle, stuffing them in her pockets until they bulged comically.

Mary Ellen, who didn’t seem to know what Katherine was doing, continued to pound, as Katherine wrote a simple note on the next page of the notepad and tore it out. Send no-one after me this time, it read. Setting this on the desk, Katherine opened the one bottle and the needle’s packaging, and drew the same dose she’d tried to inject into a rat, in what seemed like another life.

“What are you doing?” Mary Ellen shouted in, still pounding, but Karen still ignored her. Suddenly, the woman’s face vanished, and Katherine heard her sprinting back towards the conference room.

The needle prepped, Katherine paused. She had all she needed to make a return trip and then some, of course, but this was admittedly still a huge risk. What sort of a world lay beyond the haze and static, she wondered? Was what she’d forgotten in coming here worth leaving all this behind?

Footsteps in the hall again - multiple sets. Katherine realized it was now or never, and jabbed the needle into the vein in her left arm, depressing the plunger. There was a cold feeling, and numbness, and then -

Dr. Pazio, breathless, following Mary Ellen’s frantic pace, got to the indicated door and looked in, just in time to see the last shadow of a form fade out into nothing. The owner of the office unlocked it, and the whole group crowded inside, but all they found was the note, and the computer faithfully reporting the completion of the server’s disk reformat.

Dr. Katherine Greene was never heard from again.

"The Veil of Dreams" (Part 1 of 2)

Fog, drab-gray streets. Pre-dawn night, slight graying of sky over calm harbor. The clatter of carriage wheels and hoofbeats on cobbled streets. Urgency. Something wrong. Growing numb...

Katherine started awake, the dream-like impressions already fading. Why did she feel so warm? A fever?

An attempt to put her hand to her head informed her of the restraints. Someone in the room muttered something, probably announcing that she was awake. Restraints? Why were those needed? Katherine struggled to lift her head.

“Dr. Greene, please remain still.” The voice, familiar, but Katherine couldn’t attach to it a name. The accent was American English, but it still sounded wrong. “We’re going to help you.” Though the tone and words were meant to be palliative, Katherine knew what they implied. Or, at least, she knew she should know what they implied.

Someone in a lab coat grabbed hold of her arm and held up a needle. “This is for the fever.” Before Katherine could react, the syringe’s contents were squeezed into her veins, and the world began to fade back out.

“...my God, what is happening to...” someone said, through the haze. “Get me another...”

White coats, bright, bluish light. Impossibly thin needles. Acrid clean smell. Calm voices, fear, uncertainty.

Katherine awoke bathed in sweat as she was lifted from the street. Her hair was loose, and plastered to her skull by the perspiration, tickling her neck and face where the morning breeze caught it. It was well past dawn, and the light streamed down the streets facing the harbor. Fear leaking through from the dream made her struggle feebly against the arms lifting her.

“It’s all right now, my dear.” The voice, familiar. Soothing. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Katherine, the dream fading, placed the voice. “Oswald.” She whispered, that being all she could manage. The fever still had her in its grip, but it was receding. As her husband loaded her into the carriage, Katherine drifted back off, but she still felt Oswald’s heartbeat against her cheek.

“I didn’t jump out of the carriage, Oswald.” The sitting-room was lit only by the embers in the fireplace, and empty but for Oswald Gardner and his wife, leaning against each other on a claw-footed sofa. Above the mantle, a portrait of Oswald’s parents, arms about each others’ waists, smiled elusively down. Katherine’s fever had tapered off during the night, and though she was far from recovered, she was well enough to be out of bed. “No bruises, no scrapes. What else could explain it? I went back - however briefly.”

Oswald clearly didn’t like that line of reasoning. ”Is that all it would take to send you back? A bad fever?” He hugged Katherine closer. “I remembered what you’d told me when I got to the doctor’s and found you missing, and feared the worst. It turns out I was right.”

“No, you weren’t. I’m here.” Katherine caught her husband’s gaze and held it, trying again in vain to recall something about the place where she’d been. It was like trying to remember a bad dream, that is, rather useless. “Though I wish I knew why. I was there, but only for a short time.”

“When you first came here, you thought you’d be going back somewhere quickly.” Oswald reminded her. “Though you couldn’t tell me where or why. Now I think I understand.”

“Oswald, I can’t remember it. It fades like a dream. I remember nothing but being scared and confused.” Katherine was frustrated, and Oswald knew why - she was very bright, and had an almost perfect memory of events. All that memory failed her, though, when it came to remembering the place she came from.

Oswald was silent for a few moments. He believed his wife, but the whole thing had had him worried. Three years prior, when they’d met, Katherine had been wandering the streets of Boston dressed like a man, dazed but certain that any second she’d be vanishing, returning to somewhere she couldn’t quite remember. Oswald had thought she’d been drugged, and given her refuge. He’d thought all that nonsense behind them, now, after twenty-six months of marriage. That it wasn’t worried him.

Katherine broke the silence. “Oswald, I don’t want to go back. I’m happy here. I only remember impressions, but one I don’t remember is happiness.”

“Tell me what I can do, Katherine. Shut you up in a warm room without windows, so you don’t catch ill?” He put a hand to her chin and lifted her drooping gaze. “Tell me what I can do to keep you here.”

Katherine sighed. “I don’t know of anything you can do.”

Oswald shook his head. “I don’t like it. Feeling... powerless.” His family was quite wealthy, so it wasn’t something he often felt. He loved Katherine for all the reasons some of his family had scoffed at his decision to court her - her independence, her irrepressible intellect, even, yes, the mystery of her origins.

“I don’t either. But we don’t have a choice.” Katherine sighed. “Look at it this way - this time we got through. We can only hope that if there’s a next time, the same will happen.”

Desperation. Have to find a way. Uncertainty, fear. White room, bare walls. Needle in hand, hesitation. Is this really necessary? Yes. Brief thought of preparation. The needle descends, the plunger is pressed...

Conrad took his first steps uncertainly. He remembered that he had to do something, but what, and where? His own first name came readily to mind, but everything else was - wait. His left hand clutched a rolled-up bundle of yellow paper which seemed oddly familiar, but in the evening, even the dim illumination of a nearby gas-lamp streetlight wouldn’t be enough to read. Something about this scene was unexpected, though he couldn’t remember what.

The bright, warm light from a nearby window and the sign above that window advertised a tavern or a bar, supposedly the “best place Boston,” so Conrad headed unsteadily for it. Boston, that sounded familiar, but he couldn’t say why. Why couldn’t he remember anything before a minute ago? Did he exist before that - his brain said yes, that he did. Well, what was he doing then? Nothing but haze and impressions answered.

He sat down at a table near the fire and unrolled the paper he’d been clutching. What was on it was in a familiar hand - his own, probably - and he could read it, but he had no memory of writing it.

In case of transitional memory loss:

Your name is Dr. Conrad Pazio. You were born January 15, 1981, and you work in experimental pharmaceuticals at a lab in Boston, Massachusets.

Conrad’s mind took the words and ran with them. Yes, he could now remember a few vague things - textbooks and theories and a lot of work in white-walled labs in a big building. But what was this “lab”? The word conjured an image, but the image was... blurry. He read further, and with each word his mind put more of the foggy picture into focus. 

One thing was for sure, the “Boston” of the note wasn’t the same one advertised on the sign. None of the impressions he remembered fit - where he recalled vague impressions of a clean, white, well-lit place, the Boston of this place seemed dim, slightly dirty, and gray.

There was weight in one of the pockets of the jacket Conrad was wearing - he put a hand in, and withdrew a strange handle with metal studs on one end, a small glass bottle, and two syringes sealed tightly in crinkled, clear wrapping. He knew what they were immediately, though he didn’t know how he knew. In the bottle was a clear, slightly purple-hued liquid - Conrad knew instinctively that that would help him get back to wherever he came from.

Instructions for using everything in his pocket were listed at the bottom of the page, but also there was a command - find Dr. Katherine Greene and being her back. The name conjured up the image of a woman, thirtyish, petite, with glasses and hair collected into a utilitarian ponytail.

So he knew what he was here to do - now how was he going to do it?

Katherine felt well enough the next morning to go for a walk, and Oswald was more than happy to escort her. He knew that in most situations his wife wasn’t as frail or dependant as women were expected to be, but after the close call in the carriage, he was unwilling to let her out of his sight for too long, as if this might keep her from simply vanishing yet again. 

Katherine, for her part, was glad of the company. Oswald was always sharp enough to keep up with her intellectually, which was one of the reasons they’d gotten so close. She’d found out soon after her arrival that this was a rare trait here. 

“Oswald, I had a thought.” Katherine ventured. “If I got here once, and then returned after a short time away during my fever, what’s to stop me from coming back again, if I do vanish?”

Oswald shrugged. “I can’t think of any reason you can’t, my dear, only a fear that you might not remember.”

Katherine smiled. “You think I would not remember you? I hardly think that’s possible.”

Oswald stopped, and faced his wife. “I’ve been thinking too. You can’t remember much about being there when you’re here - I see no reason that won’t work in the other direction as well.”

Katherine furrowed her brows - she hadn’t considered that. “True. But I do remember a few things. Impressions.” She drew him into motion again with gentle pressure on his arm. “Perhaps it will be enough to draw me back.”

Oswald’s brow arched, as if he’d gotten an idea. “Why take that chance? Katherine, you arrived here wearing strange clothes, the clothes of another world. Perhaps a note in your pocket would travel with you, were you to suddenly return again?”

Katherine nodded. “That’s a good idea. I could write a letter to myself, to remind me what I have here.”

“Please, Katherine, let me write it.”Oswald offered. “I need to feel like I’ve done something. I can’t just sit idly by.”

Katherine sympathized. Her husband didn’t have to work, due to his inherited wealth, but he did anyway, managing a newspaper printing business. He’d always been a man who hated being idle. After a moment’s consideration, she nodded her assent. “Seal it up so if it gets wet it isn’t ruined.” Something told Katherine that the fine vellum that Oswald would use for a letter should last longer than printing-press paper, but where she’d learned that she couldn’t recall.

At first, Conrad’s blind search was rather fruitless. No-one seemed to know the name “Dr. Katherine Greene”, and eventually he decided to stop using her title, as it seemed to confuse people. Apparently “everyone knew” that there were only three doctors in town, and they were all middle-aged men.

After an hour or so of arbitrarily asking passerby, Conrad changed tactics to asking about newspaper printers. Maybe, he thought, some random woman appearing in the streets will have been worthy of print. Having seen several people carrying newsprint, he’s sure there’s a printer around. Conrad guesses that, wherever he came from, newspapers also existed, because as soon as he saw one he knew what it was, and some details about how it was made.

That question was more successful, and soon Conrad was on his way to the office of the "Times Modern", a local newspaper. Apparently, it was the third-largest paper in Boston.

Several wrong turns and a few more helpful directions later, Conrad stood in the front of the "Times Modern" print shop. The place, part storage room and part business counter, was filled with tottering stacks of newsprint, mostly blank. At least one stack was the day’s paper. A shop-boy of maybe twelve or thirteen slouched on a stool in the back, probably hoping that Conrad would leave rather than ask something of him.

 “Excuse me, I’m wondering if you have copies of older editions of your paper here?” Conrad asked.

“Plenty of yesterday’s paper around, sir.” He immediately answered.

“I was hoping for something from a bit farther back... three years ago on April 24?” That’s the date that the note had mentioned Katherine disappeared for the first time. Conrad only hoped that time progressed the same here as it did where he’d written his note.

The boy looked at Conrad oddly, but mumbled something about going to check and vanished into the back of the shop. He didn’t sound too hopeful, and he was gone several minutes before returning. “Sorry, sir. Nothin’ that old here.”He didn’t sound too disappointed about that.

“Ah, well.” Conrad frowned, thinking about his next move. “I’m trying to find a friend, who came here a few years ago. Would you know who might be able to help me find her?”

The boy shrugged. “Might try the records at the courthouse, sir. The Times Modern don’t keep track of things like that.”

Conrad, disappointed, left the shop, armed with directions toward the courthouse. Somehow, he knew that the sort of records the courthouse would keep - births, deaths, marriages, penal sentences, and that sort of thing - would probably not help him too much. Still, the boy was right, it was worth a look. Maybe Dr. Greene had broken one of this place’s laws by accident when she arrived. He knew from the way the note was worded that she was still alive, how his former self had known that, though, was unclear.

The Gardners took their dinner without any company, as usual, though given Oswald’s local prominence they could have easily dined with anyone in town. The sun was below the horizon already, and the night was beaten back in the Gardner house only by a network of oil lamps and candles. Katherine was now used to this lighting, but it always reminded her how she’d thought it odd when she first arrived. What, she wondered, was the source of light used where she’d come from? All she remembered was that it was bright.

At dinner, Oswald held up a cream-colored envelope sealed with red wax. “Here’s your letter, Katherine.” He held it out to her over the small dining table they used when no-one else was around.

Katherine took the letter, turning it over in her hands. It felt a bit heavier than she expected, and thicker - perhaps Oswald had needed multiple pages. Her name was written on one side, in Oswald’s bold, yet precise, handwriting, but it was otherwise unmarked. “What does it say?”

“Let’s hope that you do not need to find out, Katherine.” He suggested gravely as a response. “But it’s nothing you don’t already know, Katherine. It is to remind you, in case you forget.”

Katherine smiled. “Thank you, Oswald. By the way, do you suppose that there’s clean butcher’s paper in the kitchen?”

Oswald smiled. “The letter inside the envelope is folded in a sheet of that already.”

Katherine nodded, remembering that she’d reminded Oswald to seal the letter against water. His method would protect the letter well, and since the only thing on the envelope was her name, not much would be lost if it were to be rained on.

One of the servants, a middle-aged, thin, pinched sort of woman, came in quietly, and stood off to the side, waiting for the Gardners to acknowledge her. Oswald didn’t make her wait more than two seconds before turning in that direction. “Yes, Margred?”

“Mister Gardner, there’s a man at the door.” She started. Something was bothering her, both Gardners could tell already.

“What does he want at this hour?” Oswald frowned. It was rare for visitors to come to his house uninvited, and at this hour it was practically unheard of.

“Beg pardon, sir, he’s asking to see Mrs. Gardner. Says it’s urgent.”

Katherine was just as surprised as her husband at this development. She didn’t exactly spend all her time inside the house, but she knew of no reason for anyone to come looking for her at this time of night. She ran through a list of people who she had been interacting with in the week leading up to her illness. The local glassblowers wouldn’t come all the way up here if there was a problem with her order, they’d send a note. The merchant who helped her order books might come up here to deliver one or two, but not at this time of night, and it couldn’t be called urgent. She had given one of her recently brewed chemicals to Dr. Harris, but Harris had gone out of town soon after to administer the concoction to a sick youth several miles away, and was not expected back for some time. Needless to say, a man coming and asking for another man’s wife at the door was rather unheard of, and definitely improper, unless he had a good reason for it.

“Well, see him into the sitting room.” Oswald, similarly unable to come up with an explanation, said. Katherine detected caution in his voice, balanced out with curiosity. “We’ll be along presently.”

“Yes sir.” Margred nodded, and headed back out.

The couple exchanged a look, and both knew without any words that the other had no insights on this matter.

“All right, let’s go meet your visitor.” Oswald stood. Katherine followed suit, and the two walked together to the room where their visitor would be waiting.

Conrad paced in the room he’d been let into, though he’d been asked to take a seat. Sure, there’d only been one “Katherine Greene” in that records book going back ten years, but then again that record was that of a marriage - to Oswald Gardner, whose house he was now in. He struggled to pull an image out of the fog of his memories - he remembered a basic image, but he had no way of knowing how old the memory was. Would he even recognize the person he’s sent himself to rescue?

Footsteps in the hall. More to the point, why had Dr. Greene married? Sure, she probably remembered less than he did about home, but she had to know she wasn’t from this place. She had to feel out of place, as Conrad did.

The door opposite the one that Conrad had been seen in through opened slowly, and a man and a woman entered. The man stood protectively half a step closer to Conrad than the woman, but he didn’t keep the visitor from recognizing his colleague immediately. Memories rushed back, though incompletely - The woman was indeed Katherine Greene, looking a little frail but otherwise far better than - than what? Conrad for a moment would have thought that when he had last seen Dr. Greene, she was ill, perhaps gravely. If only, he mentally grumbled, everything wasn’t so foggy!

Across the room, Katherine’s eyes widened as for her as well memories bubbled up, though they were just as incomplete. “Conrad.” She spoke his name softly.

Oswald turned to his wife. “You know him?” He was confused, and that made him a little angry. “May I suggest we all have a seat, and that you sir explain what is going on?” His tone was more than a little hostile.

“Oswald, I knew him, back - ” She took a deep breath before finishing the sentence. “Back where I was before I came here.”

“I thought you couldn’t remember anything about that place.” Oswald said, beckoning to the room’s cluster of cushioned chairs. Conrad remained silent, wisely letting Katherine take the lead on the explanation.

“I don’t know, I just - when I looked at him, I remembered some. His name is Doctor Conrad Pazio. I worked with him, before - ” She frowned, a memory escaping her clutches. “Before I came here.”

“If you’ll allow me, sir, I may have more answers than Dr... than your wife.”

“Yes. Please explain.” Oswald was uncomfortable, but curiosity beat out the discomfort. He guided Katherine to one chair, then took the one next to it, gesturing that Conrad should take one opposite them.

Conrad sat down, leaning forward. “When I got here, I didn’t remember anything. But there was a letter in my pocket.” He unfolded the yellow paper and held it up for a moment. “This is my handwriting. I wrote a note to myself, telling me who I am, and why I’m here.”

“You caried things with you.” Katherine said sideways to Oswald, referencing the letter in her pocket. “Sorry, go on.”

“The letter said that three years ago, Dr. Katherine Greene had an accident and vanished without a trace. No-one knew what happened to her, until she reappeared. She was sick, but just as someone tried to help her, she vanished again - this time people saw her fade into nothing.”

“Yes, I was sick a few days ago, and we think I might have gone... back. At least for an hour or so.” Katherine agreed. “But why are you here?”

Conrad looked to Oswald for a moment, then focused directly on Katherine. “I found a way to follow you, but I also found a way to get back. Permanently.” He put a hand into his pocket, and pulled out the little bottle. “I don’t know how it works, only that it will get us back. Maybe on the other side I know more, I do not remember.”

Oswald didn’t like this development, obviously, but he was too polite to throw the man out, even though he was literally trying to take away Katherine forever. He struggled to think of a decorous way to make the visitor leave, but before he did, Katherine beat him to speaking - with a soft laugh, which surprised both men.

“My dear, what’s so funny?” Oswald asked.

“Dr. Pazio, thank you for the thought, but I’m quite content here.” Katherine said with a good-humored shake of the head. “I’d be delighted if you stayed in town for a few days before using your potion, there, but I won’t be joining you.” She looked to Oswald, giving him a reassuring smile. “I’m quite settled here, and see no reason to go back.”

Conrad hadn’t expected this. From what snatches he remembered of the Dr. Greene he’d known, and from the wording of the letter, he did not expect that she would so thoughtlessly turn him down. “You don’t want to go back? But - ”

Katherine interrupted him gently. “Conrad, I’ve been here three years. This is home. You want me to give this up to go somewhere I don’t remember except in foggy bits?” She shook her head. “It’s not so hard a decision as you think.”

Conrad stared intently down at the little bottle in his hand. Had he thought of this before coming? What had he wanted to do if Dr. Greene had refused?

The response came not from his mind, but from the weight of that black handle device in his pocket.

Oswald, having regained composure after his wife showed no intention of leaving, spoke up in the growing awkward silence. “Dr. Pazio, we’d be delighted to have you dine with us, if you plan on staying until tomorrow night. Perhaps between the two of you you might remember more of the place you come from. However, it is late now, and we will be retiring soon.”

Conrad took the hint, and stood. “I’ll... Er, It would be a pleasure to dine with you. What time should I arrive?”

“Seven o’clock will do.” Oswald responded, forcing a smile. He’d made the offer out of courtesy, not out of a desire to have this man return. Oh, well, he thought. How bad could one dinner be? A little awkwardness was the price one sometimes paid for courtesy, after all.

Katherine started, something occurring to her. “One moment, Conrad.” She got up and hurried out of the room, returning a few moments later with a small purse. She took out four large coins, and handed them to Conrad. “If you came here anything like me you don’t have any money. This will be more than enough for one night’s stay.”

Conrad accepted the coins. “You are correct again... Mrs. Gardner.” He hesitated on her new surname, but not too much. “Until tomorrow evening then.” After shaking Oswald’s hand, Conrad left, a servant escorting him to the front door.

“Katherine.” Oswald broke the silence, after Dr. Pazio was long gone.

“Yes, dear?” Katherine asked, breaking out of a growing preoccupation with struggling to remember more about her past.

“How well did you know him?”

Katherine gathered together all the memory fragments she had. “I think... we were colleagues. Worked together. I don’t know what we worked on.” Something with white light and needles, maybe.

“You’re sure you and he were never... closer than that?” Oswald suggested.

Katherine bridled at that suggestion, but immediately realized that she genuinely didn’t know for sure. 

“I don’t think so.” She responded eventually. “I remember him... working. But nothing else about him. I didn’t remember anything at all, until I laid eyes on him. I think if we were closer he would have mentioned it.”

Oswald stood, and paced nervously. “Katherine, this is... uncomfortable. When he asked you to leave, I was scared that I might lose you, and - ”

Katherine stood, and stopped Oswald’s pacing by embracing him tightly. “I’m not going anywhere. He probably thought of this as a rescue. But I know the truth. I was rescued that day I came here, and you found me.”

Oswald relaxed, partially because of his wife’s words and partially because of her physical proximity. “You have no regrets at all?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Katherine whispered.

Oswald believed she meant it. That didn’t mean he believed it himself. As long as Conrad was still in Boston, he knew he would be hard-pressed to sleep easy.

Story continues in part 2 (here).

"The Founder"

Jack trudged through the hard-packed Arizona desert, processing what he’d just been through. They’d finally done it, he kept thinking. Finally found a way to get at the Academy.

The device strapped to his wrist, no bigger than a wristwatch, was useless for its original purpose now - if it still functioned as designed, he would not be walking through triple-digit heat in a tight-fitting black jumpsuit with nothing to drink. The knowledge that he had only to go another thirty minutes or so to reach Salome was a comfort, but also a nagging reminder that starting an hour ago, Jack couldn’t just press a button and find himself sitting in a cool, air-conditioned restaraunt, sipping a cold beer.

The facility control room was a mess. What consoles weren’t dark were either on fire or blinking madly, a cacaphony of warning lights and sirens competed to disorient Jack’s senses. the Founder, an ancient, pinched woman, threaded her way through the ruined space as her life’s work groaned and creaked, dying. Hopefully, most of the Academy personnel made it out, Jack was thinking, but at the same time he knew there were nowhere near enough time to program everyone's wristpieces. She noticed Jack come in, but didn’t change her trajectory.

The old woman fiddled with one of the more intact displays for a moment, and it popped open, revealing a small space. ”Wait for me in Salome. Wait for me to be ready.” She called urgently across the room, tossing the contents of the cubbyhole to Jack - it was a wristpiece data card. Jack wanted to argue, but the Academy shuddered again, and a sickening, rushing sound started from somewhere in the depths of the structure, rising toward them. Jack panicked, pushed the card into his wristpiece, and -

The rise leveled off, and Jack saw a road at the bottom of the other side. Grateful for the downslope and the promise of nearing civilization, Jack hurried forward, reaching the road in a matter of minutes. Uncertain which direction lay toward Salome, Jack looked in both directions. Hills and curves obscured both not too far from his location.

Just as he was about to pick a direction at random, though, a car pulled around one of the bends and headed in his direction, an old, beat up Chevy. Seeing Jack, it slowed down. Jack got a good look at the driver -a woman, maybe twenty-five, stick-thin, with thick-rimmed glasses and a mass of unkempt dark blonde hair settling around her face now that the animating wind from the car’s motion had settled. ”You lost?” She called out.

Jack went to answer, but something about her seemed familiar, something he couldn’t place. It was unlikely he’d seen this girl before, could it be that he’d once met one of her ancestors, or maybe one of her descendants? Possibly. The Academy had taught Jack that the world wasn’t as big a place as people thought. ”I’m...” Jack tried to start, but his dry throat caught on the desert dust and he managed only to cough for a few seconds. ”Trying - to get to... Salome.” He managed to force out, loud enough that the woman in the car might hear.

”I was just going there. Want a ride?” She asked, and Jack wondered immediately why she would trust him in her car. Grateful of the offer, though, Jack nodded and approached the car cautiously.

As Jack got in, the woman put her foot on the gas and he was pressed into the seat a little bit too much for his liking. ”Only a few minutes out.” She said, loudly over the wind in the open windows. ”You air force?” She gestured with one hand at his jumpsuit, without taking her eyes off the road.

Jack, after a moment to recall what he knew about twenty-first century American military organizations, nodded cautiously. Her association of him with that group might be what made her trust him enough to offer a ride. ”Is it that obvious?”

”You crash out here or something?” She replied to his question with a question.

”Umm... Or something.” Jack replied enigmatically, intentionally so. ”Not at liberty to say. I’m Jack.” The truth of how he’d come to be walking across the desert was a bit more complicated, of course.

”Helen.” She responded. ”Cell phone’s in the bag in the back seat, if you need to make a call.” Jack looked back, to see that the back seat of the car was filled with period electronics equipment, some of it almost top-of-the-line and some more antiquated. Sitting atop the whole mess was a large, bag-like purse.

Jack shook his head. ”I’m good for now. My orders for this situation are, stay in the area, someone will find me.” Jack hoped that sounded like something an Air Force pilot would say.

”Secret project, eh? Fine.” She seemed intrigued. ”I won’t press.”

”You seem to have a project of your own going on.” Jack gestured to the back of the car. ”You in robotics?”

She laughed, a high-pitched sound that Jack found unsettlingly familiar, but could not place. ”No, physics. These days a physicist needs more hardware than a factory to do any real work.” She shook her head. ”It’s a long-shot project, but I got funding for it, so...” She shrugged.

Jack nodded, but let the conversation drop off, when over the next hill he saw a glint of sun off of metal. As they cleared that rise, Jack got a good look at Salome - it was pitiably small, nestled in the dry hills. In short, a perfect place for the Founder to hide a bolthole, should she decide she needed one in this time. Just enough civilization to have the comforts, not enough to really risk having something discovered.

”You have any money on you?” Helen asked as the car passed the outer line of buildings. ”That flight suit looks a bit snug for pockets.”

”I don’t. But I can get some. Is there an ATM around here?” Jack knew that the Academy had bank accounts with all the major financial institutions of every period in history that had financial institutions, for just this purpose. He’d need an ATM card, of course, but Academy gear provided for him there.

”Yeah.” Helen looked like she was holding something back, but didn’t for very long. ”But I shudder to think of where you might keep an ATM card in that flight suit.” She looked embarrassed for saying it almost immediately.

”I don’t have one. A card’s heavier than the data it stores.” Academy rule: Never carry with you what you can fabricate once you get there. Most Academy travel gear had to be fabricated from raw energy prior to departure to avoid risk of some interesting and dangerous particle physics paradoxes. ”But I can reprogram any old blank gift card to access my account.”

Helen looked confused at this, but shrugged it off. Probably not technology widely available in this time, Jack considered briefly. He had to be more careful than he usually was on outings, he decided, since there would be no going back and cleaning up after himself in a second run through unless the Founder’s ace in the hole here in Salome was more than monumental.

Despite obvious misgivings, Helen took Jack to a convenience store, where the pair managed to convince a tired cashier to give them a blank gift card. Jack took the card, slipped it between his wrist and the watch-like device there strapped, and went into the restroom, more to let the wristpiece do its light-flashing magnetic-strip reformatting trick in privacy than because he needed to use the facilities.

Back in the car, Helen drove the two blocks to the bank in silence. Jack fiddled with the card, but said nothing, not wanting to bother his benefactor any more than necessary. Jack got out and headed for the blue-and-white ATM in the wall, for the first time not sure how much money was in the account. To the perspective of the bank computer, many other travellers like him would come later to both add and remove funds, travellers whose journeys were to Jack in the past. Who could say what was in the communal account at any given point along the stream?

Despite Jack’s worries, the ATM spit out $400 in crisp twenty-dollar bills without complaint. The gift card recovered, Jack returned to the car, where Helen was still waiting. ”Thanks for the help, Helen.” He offered her five of the twenties. ”I think I can manage from here.”

She waved off the money, and Jack wondered if he’d acted wrongly. Was that a faux pas in this culture? ”It’s almost six. What do you say you buy me dinner and call it even?”

Jack considered. It wasn’t going to hurt anything, and if the Founder arrived she’d be able to find him no matter where he was. ”Deal. Though you’re going to have to tell me what’s good in this town.” He got back into the passenger seat, and Helen, with a quick smile, turned the car back toward the main road. The sun was just beginning to sink behind the hills, and Jack shielded his eyes from its waning rays.

After only a minute or so of driving, Helen turned off the road into the parking lot of a small, beat-up looking structure whose sign claimed it to be a family restaurant. ”Best restaurant in Salome.” Helen explained. ”But that isn’t saying much.”

Jack was in the ready room, prepping for a mission to the Second Dark Age, when the Academy shook and the Founder’s voice came over the speakers. ”Attention. All personnel evacuate. This is not a drill. Evacuate the facility.” That was the first time that Jack had ever heard fear in the old woman’s voice, and that scared him more than the thought of the Academy, a structure constructed outside time itself, was under attack. It went without saying that the attackers were the Gaunts, but there wasn’t time to wonder how they’d managed to find a way to get at the Academy’s unreachable base. Jack ran to the Founder’s command center, hoping that he could at least get the old woman out...

”You all right, Jack?” Helen asked, and Jack started. He looked down to see a mostly-eaten plate of steak and potatoes in front of him, and looked back up to Helen. She looked rather worried.

”Uh, yeah, just a bad memory.” Jack shook his head. ”I lost focus there for a moment. What were you saying?”

Helen sighed. ”You asked me about my project, and just as I started you spaced out. You sure you’re all right?” Jack merely shrugged a response, so she continued. ”I was saying, what my project amounts to is a stab at wormholes. There’s a lot of complicated physics stuff that quantifies it, of course.”

Jack, his Academy training covering more about such things than Helen realized, nodded. ”A wormhole to where?” He asked. ”They need an in and an out, you know.”

”I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.” Helen waved off the question. ”I don’t think this is going to work at all, it’s a slim chance. We’re not even sure wormholes are possible. But if they are, think. Instant travel. Maybe time travel.” Helen grinned. ”It’s worth a shot.”

Jack suddenly realized why Helen had looked and sounded so familiar, and at the realization his jaw dropped. ”Y-you...”

Helen frowned. ”You all right?”

”You’re the Founder.” Jack managed. ”You sent me back to before.”

”Jack, you’re not making sense.” Helen looked really concerned now.

Holding up a finger, Jack tried to regain his composure. Wait for me to be ready. She wasn’t talking about escaping the Academy in the first place. The old woman had sent him here to make sure that her younger self became the Academy’s Founder again, because she’d remembered him being here.

But no - the Academy lived in a meta-time bubble. Its time stream was not dependent on this one... Jack’s head hurt as he tried to figure out whether this Founder would found the same Academy or a new iteration, or simply a parallel one. Had the old woman even known herself?

Now with a distinct headache, Jack signaled for and paid the bill, and the pair headed back for Helen’s car. But once they were inside, she didn’t start the engine. ”All right, spill it, Jack. What got you so flustered in there?”

Wondering whether or not he would cause more paradoxes telling Helen what he knew or staying quiet was just as painful, so Jack decided he might as well tell her. ”Fair warning, this is going to sound crazy.”

”I’m a physicist.” She responded, as if that implied some degree of inherent insanity.

Jack shrugged, and leaned back in his seat. ”I’m not a pilot. I’m... What I do is hard to explain. I work for the Academy.”

”What academy?” Helen asked.

”No. The Academy. The organization that...” Jack expected Helen to not understand what he was about to say. ”...That you lead. You’re the Founder.”

Helen started to speak, to protest, but no words came out for several seconds. ”You’re from the... the future.” She shook her head. ”A time traveler.”

”Not the future. The Academy does not exist in time or space, and we thought it was impossible to get there without going though its defenses.” Jack shrugged. ”We were wrong. The Gaunts got in. I got out as the place fell apart.”

”Gaunts?” Helen asked. It was too dark to see her expression, but Jack guessed she was not taking this well from her tone.

”It’s a long story.” Jack didn’t want to scare her off - the Academy knew so little about them that there wasn’t much to say, other than that they were superhuman beings that killed Academy personnel on sight, and on several occasions tried to use Academy wristpieces to infiltrate the facility. ”But I know I was sent here to help you do something.”

”Something like what?” Helen’s voice sounded uncertain. Jack was surprised she hadn’t run off by now.

”I don’t know exactly.” Jack sighed, and was quiet for some time, until an idea occurred to him. ”But why don’t we start with your little wormhole project and go from there?” He gestured toward the backseat, and the cargo stored there.

Helen chuckled, a thought occurring to her. ”What if you cause a paradox?”

”It wouldn’t be the first time.” Jack shrugged. ”They aren’t so bad.” Besides, the more Jack thought about it, the more he thought that the Founder he knew remembered this conversation.

”And what if I say no?”

”You would have already.” That she hadn’t, Jack took as a good sign.

”Fair point.” Helen went quiet after those two words, and didn’t speak again for nearly a minute. Eventually, she spoke up again. ”What was your Academy for?”

Jack smiled in the dim light. ”At first, to preserve a piece of this world, because the Founder knew of the coming Dark Age. Later, its scope... broadened. I’m not sure how long in its own time the Academy stood. A long time.” Jack turned fully to Helen. ”Being the Founder won’t be easy, but make no mistake when I say that it is integral to humanity’s emergence from the dark that’s coming.” And Jack knew from his many trips to the time period in question how deep the Second Dark Age would grow to be.

”All right.” Helen nodded. ”I suppose there’s no harm in starting my long-shot wormhole project, at least.” She started the car at last. ”Who knows where that will lead?”

”I do. Hopefully, you will soon.” Jack responded quietly, probably inaudibly considering the sound of the engine, as they pulled out onto the road.

This story written for Klazzform's Short Story Competition on dndonlinegames.com.