There is nothing beautiful behind walls that you are not allowed to leave. The assertion sprang into Kik's mind as she stepped out into the streets of the city, her city. They had been provided with images, of course, of videos and any other material that could be designated as for learning that they could ever want. The problem was that the holographs did not breathe as the looming monoliths of steel and light seemed to. Around her, her siblings were dancing, they were shouting, jostling into her as they tried to pull her into their celebration, but she couldn't be bothered. This was the culmination of more than fifteen years of effort. Behind them, in the doorway of the building that had been both home and prison, the gaggle of scientists stood crowded together. They were solemn. They were bitter.

Slowly, Kik's mouth turned up at the corners and then the smile became a grin, which became a chuckle, which soon became a roaring laugh. This was her triumph and their failure. This was the physical manifestation of a proof she had been working in her mind for years, the proof that she had surpassed her creators. She was better than them and now they knew it.

And in the end, that was all she had ever really wanted.

They had been marching for hours now, letting the newly promoted captain get the hang of ordering the regulars in and out of formation. It wasn't like the men could grumbled about it, even if they didn't have a new officer in command of the company, they'd still have been marching. Thats all they had been doing all winter, well they had been doing bayonet drills and mock combat but it was mostly marching. Marching in the snow, marching in the rain and the mud. it was suppose to have something to new with instilling discipline in the troops and that, in the option of Sergeant David Saint Clair, who had been in the rout after the battle of Wabash River, was something the Legion needed and was worth getting soaked for. Not that it had been raining today.

"The men may retire!"

The Captain's voice drifted back through the ranks, as the marching formation of men came to a halt. her and there, men mumbled their relief or praised god. Most quietly commented on their sore feet. Each man walked back towards the barracks. Muskets were stacked, packs were stowed and as the sun started to drip behind the trees, the men started to form lines at the different cook fires.

"Hold me kit" said David, patting a fellow sergeant by the name of Andrew on the arm, "I have ta go take a piss."

"Right" sighed Andrew, taking the tin plate as David started to walk out of Legionville.

Aleksandr breathed out slowly as he watched the barren icy landscape go by. The sound of an engine rumbling assailed his ears from all sides; not one, but several engines, including the engine of the truck in which he and a dozen other soldiers were sitting. In the gloved fingers of one hand he held a lit cigar; Aleksandr glanced at the other soldiers, whose wary eyes shone with desire as they saw the cigar in his hand. Aleksandr had no intention of giving it up; he had found it in the last battle against the defending Germans in a town near Warsaw, and smokes were a rare occurance now in the Red Army.

Aleksandr's hand rose up to place the cigar between his frozen lips as his eyes turned back to scan the bleak snow that seemed to stretch out endlessly. He breathed the smoke in, and then opened his mouth, gently allowing the vapour to escape his lips. He had little time to enjoy it, however; a cold, gruff voice interrupted the moment of peace.

"Put out that cigar, comrade. We're nearing Warsaw, and then you won't have time to savour the pleasure." It was the one officer in the line of trucks, trundling over the cold Polish road, that was of a higher rank than Aleksandr himself. Reluctantly, Alek dropped the cigar to the floor; the heel of his boot crushed it to a few ashes. The officer smiled grimly, almost sadistically in satisfaction. "You would do well to recall that we are riding to Warsaw, not to the smoking room." A few chuckles ran through the truck at the officer's comment, but the truck suddenly stopped; the officer stepped down from the truck and walked to the driver. They spoke for a moment before the officer returned, heaving with him a number of objects wrapped in a blanket; he dropped it to the ground to reveal they were rifles, and then beckoned for the rest of the soldiers to come down as well.

"We're at the first checkpoint," he roared. "You take one rifle, and one clip--no more!"

As Aleksandr pushed himself off his seat and followed the other soldiers off the truck, he glanced out in the distance, beyond the line of trucks. Barely visible against the cold fog was their destination: Warsaw.

101-54-7A: Designation Kik


Maxim Demochev had been to Seoul several times in the past. If one could still refer to it as the past. His work had taken him around the world and conferences in places as far flung as South Korea were not unusual. But that had been about twenty years after the current locus so there was zero risk that he would encounter a younger version of himself out here on the crowded streets. No, somewhere in South Ossetia, Georgia a ten year-old Maxim was watching ants crawl across the plate of a cheap toy microscope.

And so he sat quietly just outside a grubby street café at the junction of a dark alleyway and a side-street sipping soju and occasionally checking his wrist watch. The street lead to a small extremely high-tech (for the time, of course- to Demochev it was practically archaic) laboratory where advancements in the field of genetics were valued far above ethics. It would soon become notorious, its exposure leading to public outcry and a revitalised debate into regulation of human genetic engineering in South Korea. For now, however, the orchestrators of that exposure were only now beginning to escape from the confines in which they had spent much of their short lives. Around the corner Subject 101-54-7A, who identified herself as Kik, was blinking in a sunlight she had only ever seen filtered through frosted glass.

Demochev always personally recruited new Chronologists; he saw it as a simple act of decency. For if they accepted, and they nearly always did, their lives would never be the same again. He at least owed them the chance to come face-to-face with the man who would be the primary agent of that change. That and it was a nice break from the paperwork…

Still, he could not often help but feel cruel when he uprooted these people from their lives. No matter how much he told himself they would never actually experience their lives if he didn’t enlist their help to repair the timeline, it never felt like that when he was ‘on the ground’ so to speak. And Kik more so than others. She was a newborn, really, and she’d never know what she was about to miss.

Demochev stood up from his seat, leaving an unusually crisp ten thousand won note on the table, pulled his jacket on and walked towards the corner with controlled stride. Right on time (Theodore had been getting better and better at it recently), a slender form walked into him in a flurry of tattooed skin and short flying hair.

“Oh, I do apologise,” he said in perfect Korean without the slightest trace of an accent. “Kik, isn’t it? Allow me to buy you a glass of soju. I doubt the scientists at your facility allowed you alcohol and I think it’s about time that you indulged a little.”

David Saint Clair


Demochev rolled a small rock into the creek with the toe of his shoe. On missions it was necessary for Chronologists to go undercover; to dress, act and speak as those in their current locus in space and time did. To simply appear in a neoprene jumpsuit (as had been the fashion with the edgier youth in Demochev’s time) in the middle of Ancient Greece would have the effect of introducing a minor earthquake into that region of the timeline if many people were to witness it. And that would never do- it was their job after all to smooth out the bumps and stitch up the tears in the rich and (unfortunately complicated tapestry) of space-time.

During recruitment, however, this was not always the case. Occasionally potential Chronologists needed a bit of encouragement in order to believe Demochev’s origin and his clothes and unfamiliar dialect (in the more recent English-speaking countries only; there was no use in them not being able to understand him at all) often helped spur on that belief.

Consequently, Demochev had turned off the Gen-11 signal in his wristwatch and was wearing his usual clothes- a smartly-cut grey suit and his black dress shoes- whilst he waited for David Saint Clair to arrive.

Behind him, Demochev became aware of the faint sound of pattering in the dust and rolled his eyes, mouthing a silent Georgian swearword at whoever the operator in the Invi was as he realized why Saint Clair was even out here by himself in the first place.

“Mr Saint Clair, I would very much appreciate it if you… finished what you are currently engaged in and allowed me a few moments to speak with you. Don’t worry, I think it’s rather obvious I’m not a Native American. I’m here as a friend, to ask you to assist your country.” And every other country on the planet.

Kik was too busy, far too busy, looking up to be concerned with watching the street before her. She had already collided with a number of pedestrians, all of which she ignored, cursings, rude jestures, and all. But, when this stranger spoke, not with anger or annoyance, but aquiescence, asking for forgiveness, Kik found herself interested. He was a foreigner, which alone was only barely interesting, but he was still different. For one, she had never met a foreigner who could speak Korean. The geneticist who had come once to observe them had brought a translator with him, a man who looked every bit like the human parrot he was.

And then, of course, there was the promise of soju, the forbidden and stimatized. There were many things that they had demanded and, as the will of the public slowly turned against them, they were given, but there were a few that had been deemed non-negotiable. All in all, she was sold.

Kik looked up into the strangers eyes and smiled, tugging easily at the ends of her hair. "Yes," she said plainly, without either gratitude or demand. It was a simple statment of fact, of her agreement. "7C and 7F had some once, but never me." It didn't occur to her to wonder how he knew about the scientists or the restrictions. When everything was new, one had to choose the things that warranted surprise carefully.

“Merde, merde, merde, merde, merde!” Aurélie hissed as she tore through the trees, as fast as her burning legs would allow.

She couldn't hear them any more, couldn't hear their enraged screams. Only the constant sound of her gun banging against her leg as she ran. Still, she could feel their presence behind her, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Making her run faster.

She ducked around a tree before sliding down the cut away above the creek, boots dragging dark lines through the leaf litter. She paused there for a moment, gasping in harsh breaths as she rested her forehead against the side of the hill. “Merde.” she whispered.

They had shot Phillipe. The job had been completely botched and now Phillipe was dead. She banged her forehead once into the damp earth, gritting her teeth to keep a sob from escaping. It was supposed to be easy. Get in, sabotage the tracks, get out. But Hervé had taken too long to get the god damn equipment together and they hadn't had enough time to get away. The whole damn train of Germans had seen them, and now- and now-

“Phillipe.” she sobbed, her voice muffled by the leaves.

The sweet smell of plums filled the air, carried from the orchard on the warm September wind and gently stirred by the bubbling sound of the brook that ran beneath Chen. Reminded of his lunch by the aroma, the monk stirred from his contemplation and withdrew two small fruits from his robe. He tossed one into the air, smiling as he interrupted its fall with his other hand. With a chuckle to himself, he playfully tossed the plums between his hands a few times, eventually holding both in the calloused palm of his right hand.

The monk closed his eyes for a brief moment, then slowly and deliberately transferred one plum to his other hand. The remaining plum was extended out over the gently flowing waters of the brook, and then lowered into the brisk water. As the current grabbed at the plum and began to carry it down the stream, Chen opened his eyes to watch the bright spot of purple disappear around a bend. Only after it was gone from sight did he bring the other plum to his mouth and take a bite.

Without the loss of even a drop of juice, Chen contentedly finished the plum, each bite punctuated by a happy little hum. His meager lunch completed, he stood from his cross-legged position on the rock at the brook's edge, gathered his skirt, and stepped gracefully down onto the pebbled bank of the small stream.

The villagers never seemed to grow tired of his `miracles'. Again and again, the alchemist did the exact same things, and again and again, the people were in awe of it. This time, it was a simple matter of removing some rather bad stains from a tablecloth. Wine, blood, fat, beer, and that was just the beginning. Had Theodore been using nothing but water, he would never be able to get rid of it all, but with one or two of the mixtures he had discovered, it proved simple, and had paid well -- a groat, enough to keep him alive for another two or three days. Not that he was in any need of money, having almost half an angel stashed away somewhere at home.

Thinking about the money made the man smile, all the possibilities of spending it coming to his head. Two new flasks was the first point on the list, but there was much more: some silver to experiment on, a little sulphur, maybe half a bag of that exotic salt one of his friends had shown him. He could remember that time very well: after a handful of it was thrown in the fire, the flames turned a bright green, and felt much warmer.

All those wonderful things would have to wait, though. At the moment, Theodore had a much rarer and more important task at hand. Washing had taken a little too long, and his patient, Lady Greenkin had probably been waiting at his door for a while. She was by far the most interesting person he worked with, and, as if that wasn't enough luck, she was rich, too. Her health, on the other hand, was rather poor, and was only getting worse. Bloodletting hadn't helped, nor had any of the herbal mixtures he had tried. Theodore was stumped, and was becoming rather concerned about there being any way at all of helping her. Stopping would also be problematic, and would hurt his reputation, but if she died while in his care, he would be accused of poisoning, and that would mean once again fleeing, this time from a place he had spent twelve years in, and where he was happier than anywhere else.

Turning to the little-tread road that headed to his house, Theodore finally came to the conclusion that had been trying to get into his head for months: he needed a break. It was wonderful to be able to let the girl eat various things and watch the effect, but those lead pills might have been a bad idea. A few months in London, she'd die, and he could find someone else to try interesting things on. Another patient like her and he could write another book, about the effects of metals on the human body; he could also write it now, but he hadn't found any beneficial effects yet, which wouldn't make for too interesting a book.

Without noticing it, Theodore had reached the porch of his house, and the girl was nowhere to be seen. The alchemist looked around, concerned, but there was nobody to be seen. He pushed the door, but it was locked, and he cursed, certain that if she came in (which already was rather unlikely) she would certainly not lock it behind her. With a vain hope that she had run off to the bushes for a minute, Theodore called out, his voice full of panic, ``Lady Greenkin! Please come!.. Melissa!''

After there being no reply for a minute, the alchemist took out the key, his hands shaking. It took him several seconds to fit it into the lock, after which he quickly turned it twice, pulling the door open, and then quickly closing it, forgetting the key outside. Hurriedly, he put a bar over it, then rushed to his book case, grabbing the most important books, and putting them in a bag, some pages starting to fall out due to such rough treatment. Theodore didn't care: he needed to get out, and fast. After the books came the metals, bits of silver, iron and copper, and some last remains of lead, and finally, he grabbed his pouch with money, hiding it under his robe.

Theodore had almost finished packing by the time the noise he had dreaded so much came. A knock on his door, heavy and foreboding. He could imagine what would happen next. ``Lady Greenkin has fallen ill, all because of your meddling. Die, murderer!'' her father would say, or maybe her brother, or lover. Then, he would be grabbed, and pulled to the village, the people gathering to watch the spectacle, nobody saying anything to protect him. Perhaps he could flee through the back door? But no, they would catch him, they would certainly catch him.

Taking a very uneven breath, Theodore put his bag of things down, walking over to the door and unbarring it. He didn't bother look through the eye, he didn't care who it was; it could just as well be Death himself standing at his door, and he would still open. The wood creaked as it turned on the hinges, and Theodore looked away for a second, only looking at the visitor when he was fully visible. Confused, the man stared at his visitor, not recognising in him any of men he knew. It took Theodore a few seconds to fully examine the strange guest, but eventually he managed to force himself to say, his voice still somewhat uneven, ``Good day... I... Theodore Higgs, at your service.''

Aleksandr Zhukovsky


Demochev did not like guns. Firstly because he was a scientist- those in the profession tended to be of a passifistic persuasion, viewing guns as crude killing machines that occupied a world far removed from the quiet endeavor of a laboratory. Secondly because he had grown up in Georgia and his childhood had been punctuated by civil war and Russian invasion. Even now, the chatter of gunfire that rattled through the grey dawn reminded him of the street battles in Tbilisi when his mother had locked them in their apartment, lights off, curtains drawn and tried to entertain her children with recordings of American sitcoms on the television.

A German checkpoint in occupied Poland was being attacked by a battalion of the Red Army who included a man Demochev wanted to talk to. By its very nature, this recruitment was going to a little more… interesting than usual. But unfortunately the work of the Chronologists was never far from danger and Zhukovsky would be worth it, provided he could convince him to join their cause.

This time, it was necessary to look the part. A tattered Soviet uniform (a lieutenant-colonel, naturally; at fifty-seven he better suited a higher rank) and a woolen cap pulled down over his greying hair. A Tokarev TT-33 pistol was in his left hand. In the chaos of the assault, barking orders in Russian (a language he had known since childhood and spoke without the aid of a Gen-11) he would be assumed to be a member of the battalion.

He ducked in through the broken-in door and, keeping close to the wall, went into the locker room across the entrance. There, at the door, two men were taking in turns to defend their position from several Germans shooting at them from across the internal courtyard, sheltering behind an all-terrain motorcar.

As Aleksandr turned to reload, Demochev took his shoulder.

“Comrade!” he said, pulling the other man across the room back out into the watery sunlight. “You are being relieved. We need you back outside…”

Soon they were out, beyond the tree-line of conifers at the side of the road, sitting down on the needle-covered earth to regain his breath, Demochev looked up at the other man.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Your battalion will take the post. I must speak to you about something very important that you can do for the good of your fellow man.”

Aurelie Benoit


“Quick!” came a voice from across the creek, speaking in perfect French. Demochev, dressed in his usual attire, extended a hand towards her. “The Germans are searching behind the warehouse to the west but it will not take long for them to discover you are not there. In approximately one minute and thirty-eight seconds they will start to head for this creek.”

Actually, he had no idea when the Germans would arrive. The histories of the resistance didn’t go into that much detail. But he did know that they would eventually find and kill the second saboteur; Aurelie Benoit, who had hidden herself at the creek near the railway tracks outside Vassieux-en-Vercors. The one minute and thirty-eight seconds had been purely for show.

Recruiting a person who was about to die might have been seen to be counter-intuitive in their aim of reintroducing stability to the time-line. But for all Aurelie’s friends and family would know, her disappearance would be the same as her death and would impact but a little on the time-line. The Germans would be deprived of a killing, this was true, but this would hopefully not vastly alter the outcome of their activities in the region. They had another more important task to concern themselves with now.

“If you want to live, I suggest you come with me,” he added, gesturing for her to cross the creek.

Chen Jiang

“I always understood that frugality, jian was one of the three tenants of the Way,” said Demochev, gently from behind Chen. “I would have eaten that plum,” he added.

This was one of the most peaceful places he had been in a long time. The Invi occupied space in the middle of the Sahara and, as such, the only way to escape was to venture out onto the sweltering dunes. The rest of the station, save for Demochev’s own modest quarters, was a hive of activity, with technicians, engineers, janitors and Chronologists on down-time wandering its halls, common rooms and digital libraries. On the few occasions when recruitment of a new member was necessary, it was not often that he had the luxury of encountering them in such serene surroundings. The time-line had fractured randomly and he must take moments of stability when he could find them, even if they did occur at rather inconvenient points in the target’s life.

“The food where I come from is rather artificial,” he went on in classical Chinese. “My name is Maxim Demochev and I would very much like to enlist your services for a task that is of the utmost importance.”

With luck, this would be one of the easier recruitments. An eighth century monk, one who spent much of his day in meditative thought, would surely have little trouble understanding the idea of time-travel even if he had no concept of the technology required to do it. Persuading him to involve himself and detach from his life-sworn duties, however, would be a different matter.

Theodore Higgs


“Excellent,” said Demochev, closing the door behind him and stepping through the doorway past a bewildered Higgs. “I’m Maxim Demochev, likewise.”

The inside of Higg’s hovel was dark and smelt strongly of the bunches of dried herbs that hung from the rafters. Over the organic leafy scent there was the sharp metallic overtone of purified chemicals; sulphur and ammonia. In an open jar in the corner sat a gleaming blob of mercury, no doubt intended to impress the customers who were beckoned into the mysterious surroundings. Demochev, however, deliberately drew his stool as far away from it as possible.

He wanted to empathise with the alchemist, identify him as a fellow scientist but in these surroundings, more suited to a fortune-teller or a folk healer than a person who devoted himself to the empirical observation and the scientific method it was difficult. But these were much more primitive times, he told himself. Chemistry and an elementary understanding of the elements was only just beginning to coalesce outside the dogma of religion. Here in the West (the Arabs, of course, were centuries ahead) medicine still tended to do more harm than good.

“This may be difficult to believe but, from one scientist to another I hope you will at least open your mind to the possibility until it is disproven…” Demochev took a breath. “I am from approximately six hundred in the future. I have come here to meet you and ask if you will assist me in a task that is vital for the future of humanity. Literally, the future, in fact.”

Aleksandr heard the bullets whittle past around him--he felt them as they narrowly missed him. Out the door, not far down through a battered courtyard, was a motorcar, riddled with bullets; behind it were a number of German troops, who were attempting--and for the moment failing--to find an opening and get past the position that Aleksandr and another soldier were defending. In a fluid motion, Aleksandr slid out of his cover, took aim with his rifle, and squeezed the trigger; there was a report, the sound of the bullet exploding from the barrel, and a German soldier cried out and fell to the cold snow. Swiftly, Aleksandr returned to his cover. Killing gave him no joy; he killed only for his motherland, the great nation that the fascist scum had betrayed and attempted to stab in the back. But now the Red Army was riding in triumph through occupied Poland, and after that only Germany itself would be left.

As Aleksandr prepared to reload the rifle, however, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see a Lieutenant Colonel; without question, Aleksandr followed the higher-ranking officer's orders and followed him, however reluctant to leave his comrade to defend the position alone. Several moments later, they were near the line of conifers; the battle was still near by, and the sound of gunshots and yelling could still be heard in the distance. Demochev's words confused Aleksandr somewhat--how could this man be sure? The Germans were deeply intrenched at the checkpoint, prepared to fight to the brutal death.

"And what is this something I can do?" Aleksandr asked with heavy breaths, the frenzy of battle still leaving him; an eyebrow was raised on the face of the cynical soldier. He had many questions, but he would allow Demochev to answer this one first.

The monk turned to face the voice behind him, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his beard. "You are right, of course, that frugality is a treasure -- but what is more frugal than nature's course? May the stream carry the plum to a home in rich soil." Chen's hands were clasped in front of him, and a sharp shake of his wrists wrapped the excess fabric around them and out of his way. It was a minimal movement with maximal effect, much like the polite bow that followed it.

The man before him was... odd, Chen had to admit to himself. His language was excellent, but there was something about him that seemed a bit out of place. Chen's eyebrows furrowed thoughtfully as he looked his guest over, but he quickly dismissed his feeling. He had spent long enough away from his previous life that he often felt out of place, himself. Surely that was all. He was simply human.

"I can make you no promises, Maxim, but I will hear what you have to say." Many times before, his former officers had approached him with just such a statement. Chen was well aware of what he had left behind by abandoning his military career, though, and had no intention of returning to it. If, though, this Demochev had another need, a need more in keeping with the Way, then he would consider it.

Chen nodded for the man to continue, his contemplative eyes locked intently on Maxim's.

(posted in wrong location. sorry...)

The man seemed more and more peculiar by the second. The possibilities sprang to his mind: an angel, a devil, maybe Satan himself -- or maybe merely a fellow alchemist, of much greater renown and due to that so strangely dressed? As Demochev spoke, Higgs smiled politely, having more and more reason to belief the last, and yet at the same time feeling his mind resist the concept more and more: the way the man looked at his many works. His workspace may have been a little behind the times, mostly due to the distance from London and the lack of a cleaning lady (who, naturally, could not be trusted to touch at least half of the items present), but surely, Aristotle's Physics had to show that he was a man of knowledge!

Once the subject of time travel was reached, however, Theodore calmed down, deciding that whoever the man was, talking to him would be worth the while. Besides, it didn't seem likely that Theodore would be able to help him on the spot, which meant that the two of them would probably be going somewhere, and that couldn't possibly be a bad thing. Things seemed doubly pleasing because this meant that not only had he (or not only will he -- depending on how you look at it) mysteriously vanished, his work until then was enough to keep his name alive for six hundred years.

``Well, this is most interesting,'' he finally said, having taken a pause after Maxim had finished his sentence. Thoughts were racing through his head, questions about what had happened in all that time, and how far the sciences had progressed, but the need to set out as soon as possible kept his mind from going all too far. Instead, he said, trying to sound like this was what his whole life had been heading to all along, ``I was worried why there wasn't anyone from the future around, at least at the colleges. When do we set off, and to when? I'm not sure the priest here will be willing to help with the incantation, but I'm sure I can find someone in the nearby area... Or are the two of us enough for the spell?''

David was in a rather awkward position, not only because someone had caught him with his breeches open and the parts that made him a male hanging out but his mind scattered in several directions. Part of his brain wanted to make him jump, part of his brain wanted him to stay still so he didn’t get covered in piss, part of his brain wanted to turn him around, part of his brain wanted to go for his knife and the last part of his brain was trying to sort out which was the better option. During this moment of indecision, the bodily function he was performing finished, allowing him to put everything away and button up his breeches.

Drawing the knife at his belt, the Legionary turned to face whomever had come up behind him, while he chewed over the words of the mystery man. Most of it was fairly straight forward, save for the Native American part. So the fellow wasn’t born on here, that wasn’t strange, hell half of The Legion of the United States was made up of immigrants. Why would it be important to mention something like that? It was easy enough to tell from the horrid accent.

“I servin me country right now” said David, looking over a man in the strangest cloths he had ever seen, “Who are you?”

[posted in wrong location]

Iron Hill Maximum Security Penitentiary, in Bartram, Wyoming. A home for criminals of the worst sort; mass murderers, cultist, drug kingpins and mafia bosses.

And one deranged chronologist.

Evan Baygell sat on his hard cot, wringing his hands together between his knees, waiting anxiously for something to happen. This prison was boring to him; there was nothing he could do that would entertain him in the least. He exercised in the prison yard when the opportunity was presented and read in the library when he was allowed, but not because he derived any form of earthly pleasure from these activities. He performed them because he wanted to keep his mind and body sharp for the day that he knew would come eventually; the day when he would be released from this place because of the Pandora's box he had unleashed upon the earth. No, none of his colleagues had done this - it was Baygell's doing.

And he was damned proud of it. He knew he'd meddled with the time stream, and that was what had caused the troubles that he knew was happening. The rest of the prisoners were pleasantly unaware of the loop they were caught in, but Baygell knew. Oh, he knew alright. The rest of the inmates were too stupid, too simple-minded to comprehend the simple fact that their lives were now caught in limbo with little chance of recovery. He knew that he was trapped in with them, but he had been having fun with it so far - predicting the words that the man-ape who bunked across the hall from him, a septuple-homicide named Max, would have said next, scaring him with supposed precognitive talent. He revelled in how he pulled the inmates' strings with the deft direction of a puppet master.

And he revelled in the thought that the ICC would be unable to contain this, and therefore would come to him eventually. That they would present themselves on bended knee, begging for the assistance of the one they had spurned. Baygell would help, if only because he wanted to see just what his experimentation had inflicted upon the world - not some stilted sense of honor or the feeling that he needed to put right what he had done "for the good of mankind", only to see just how badly he had managed to botch everything.

So he waited, and he bided his time. Eventually, at 8:03 PM, just as it had been for the last four days, Max came lumbering down the hallway, flanked by three armed guards, and made a sneering threat against Evan, which the scientist turned back at him with flippant ease. Max shuddered, his eyes temporarily widening, and then he was enclosed in his cell again. Evan cackled, as he always did.

The chronologists would come for him.

They had to.

“Quick!”

Aurélie screamed. She immediately whirled around, pulling her rifle from her hip and blindly firing it at the man across the river. Click...

Empty... For a painfully long moment she just stood, gun out, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights. Then he began to speak, in perfect French and with a beautiful accent, which only served to confuse her more. This man (in a fine grey suit, too, the kind Aurélie had never seen) seemed nothing like the coarse, young German soldiers that had been pursuing her the moment before...

Although, just because he dressed nice and spoke pretty didn't necessarily mean he wasn't a German. Or maybe a collaborator. He could be part of the Milice. “ If you want to live...” Was that a threat? He certainly didn't seem threatening; maybe reasonable, even amiable. It didn't even look like he had a weapon on him and if he did, he'd already had plenty of opportunity to use it... Still, when he beckoned her to him, she remained stock-still.

“Who the hell are you!?” Her hands still shook with adrenaline, clutching her useless gun tightly.

Aleksandr Zhukovsky

"Believe it or not, I am from the future," said Demochev, with a lack of grandiosity that came from having uttered that sentence many many times before. "From approximately one hundred and forty years in the future, actually. I will be born ninety years from now in the capital of Georgia and I will grow up to be a quantum physicist specialising in time-travel."

Pausing briefly to look around him at the snow that had settled on the grass beyond the tree line, the serenity of the scene fractured by the sound of shouts and distant gunfire, he went on. If one gave potential Chronologists too much time to think during this initial flurry of somewhat life-altering information then they tended to back away with a look of terror or worse. And Zhukovsky had a gun so it could very well be worse.

"Yes, we have developed- perhaps I should say will develop- time travel. But you will know better than most that human being have an infinite capacity for not only good but bad. Some of my colleagues ignored what was safe and travelled back in time, altering things. And there is only so much alteration that the time-line could take. Rather like ice bending before it breaks. So the time-line has broken and we are currently occupying a small island of space-time that represents one of the larger bits of ice left over, so to speak."

"I am here because I would like to recruit you into a rather different organisation to the one you are now in. We call ourselves the Chronologists and we have charged ourselves with repairing the time-line. We go back in time and help the time-line to spring back to its original shape, to glue the ice back together again," he said, then fell silent, waiting for a reaction from the other man. Occasionally it was easy to guess how another person would react but mostly, Demochev didn't have a clue. And Aleksandr was no exception.

Chen Jiang


"Of course," said Demochev, with a smile as he returned the bow. He liked the monk already. Chronologists were all too often men and women of action, some of them a little too gung-ho for Demochev's liking. Chen was clearly a thinker, a strategiser, much like Demochev himself.

"Time is a very ordered thing. I expect you see it as the constant movement of qi, am I correct? Like a ticking clock, though that will mean nothing to you as I don't believe they've been invented yet." Demochev cleared his throat. "Excuse me, I digress. Well, I study the flow of time. In the future you see, we will know much more than people do now about how objects and people move through time. Rather like a boat sailing down a river," he added, gesturing to the stream into which Chen had dropped his plum. He was enjoying this analogy- it fitted very well into what he was attempting to explain.

"But we were never meant to sail our boats upstream and upset the flow of other boats. We were not supposed to change things. Nature can compensate, to a certain degree. Certain parts of the river can flow a little faster to bring a boat back into the path it should be following but there's only so much it can do. People who did not care about the consequences caused an earthquake. Rocks tumbled into the river, damning up some parts and creating whirlpools and rapids so the boats cannot sail properly. It is my job to help to lift out those rocks, make events as they should be, and make the river calm again."

"But I need your help, you see there are many rocks and we must have many people to lift them out again. We call these people Chronologists and I would very much like you to join us."

A hand rose to scrape the rough stubble on Aleksandr's chin, as he seemed to contemplate Demochev's words. He seemed to be taking Demochev's explanation quite well, though he was truly quite shocked. From the future? Time travel? Such things occurred, at least, Aleksandr had believed they occurred only in books. Yet this man had come out here, disguised as a Red Army officer, and thus Aleksandr concluded that Demochev was either mad, or telling the truth. Part of him wanted to just shake his head and return to his post, but for some reason he opted instead to remain and hear Demochev out.

When Demochev had finished speaking, Aleksandr said nothing for a moment, his eyes, grim and cynical, showing no signs of what was occurring behind them. Finally, he said, "Time travel...it is difficult to believe, but for some reason I find myself believing you. Not least because you clearly do not carry yourself like a Lieutenant Colonel." For the briefest moment, a hint of a bitter smile crossed his pale lips before it returned to its grizzled expression. After a pause, he hesitantly continued. "However, about assisting you, I am not so sure. I have a duty to my country and to my people to fight this war. Though I am sure you would know how the war ended."

Chen waited patiently as he listened to Demochev's explanation, his intense gaze obviously processing the information but signaling nothing of his thoughts on the matter. When he had finished and offered his invitation, Chen turned to stare out over the stream. Long moments of silence passed as he considered, broken only once in the middle by a softly-spoken, "...I think, Maxim Demochev..., " but followed by another profound stretch of quiet contemplation.

After the passage of these several moments, Chen turned back to face his guest fully. "You seem to understand something of the Way." He paused, then added with a wry smile, "Even if you do not." After a sharp nod, he continued very seriously, "Time flows from the Way, it flows to the Way, to stand in it is to stand in the Way. To strive against it is, as you have said, to sail upstream and create disharmony in oneself. If what you say is true, if the river has been tampered with and damaged, then its restoration is certainly imperative."

There was another moment of silence as Chen struggled to put words on his next thought, but eventually his eyes narrowed and he spoke once again, "But what I must know, Maxim Demochev, is how you choose which rocks you remove. There are times, as I'm sure you are aware, that a well-dammed river will flow faster, freer, and even truer to its course than a river which is abandoned to pursue its own direction. Boundaries and limits are not always restricting, but often free us to pursue integrity."

"How is it, with what right and wisdom is it, that your Chronologists--," Chen stumbled only slightly over the unfamiliar word, "--are the architects of Time's river? Or are they merely the ones who lift the stones?" Though the question was clearly a challenge to Demochev and his offer, it was asked without even a trace of malice or accusation; it rang only with Chen's honest inquisitiveness.