"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.