Read Summer of Love, a Time Travel for Free Online Page A

aftereffects of the radiation vaccine, even his gene
tweaking—these have improved on the original design, certainly, but haven’t
made him a new breed of human. The people strolling on the boulevard are modern
people like him. They’re neither Neanderthals from the past nor devolts from
the future. They may differ in circumstances, but not in fundamentals.
    Two
women stroll around Lloyd Lake. From their colorful costumes, a Cherokee maiden
and an Elizabethan lady. “Hey, man, got a joint?” they call. He steps into the
shadows without a word. “Asshole,” they call again.
    He
resists the urge to advise them to wash out their unmaidenly mouths with soap
and swallows his outrage. He didn’t ask for this t-port, he was drafted. His
graduate thesis on liver clones—a vital topic!—had to be put on hold. Not to
mention he’d just started the affair with Bella Venus. Their families were much
excited by their meeting, which could have been arranged, but had been random.
The randomness added a keen edge to their lovemaking.
    Give
it up? Give her up? For how long? Seventy-six days in the past? Hasn’t
his family done enough for the Great Good?
    Apparently
not. He--Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco—is a cosmicist. Heir to a distinguished cosmicist
dynasty. To give is best. Live responsibly or die. He’s expected to sacrifice.
    Especially
in a Crisis.
    He
glances over his shoulder, but the women are gone. He unsnaps a neurobic bead
from his pharmaceutical necklace and pops the bead open, inhaling the
metallic-tinged vapor.
    His
head clears. Better. Better.
    Now,
then. He may be half a day late, but at least he’s made it in one piece. He wriggles
his toes in the Beatle boots, examines his fingers. Mega. Toes and fingers all
in place. In the early days, some t-porters lost fingers or ears or found
themselves buried hip-high in concrete. When to When isn’t the only
calculation. Where to Where counts for a lot, too, and he’s arrived right on
target--at the Portals of the Past.
    The
Portals have stood exactly in the same place for nearly six hundred years. The majestic
doorway was all that remained of the Towne mansion after the Great Earthquake
and Fire of 1906. Retrieved from the ashes and set on the shores of Lloyd Lake,
the Portals proved ideal.
    Permanence
in the face of flux.
    Chi
looks around.
    Right
before he transmitted, the tachyonic shuttle surrounded the Portals. Steelyn
lattices, calcite crystals, an artillery of photon guns. A thousand imploders arranged
in a half-moon. The awesome dish of the chronometer. SOL Project staff scurried
around, and his skipfather stood near, whispering final instructions. The Chief
Archivist and her three top ferrets checked and rechecked historical sources on
their knuckletops.
    His
skipmother stood near, too, fidgeting, more nervous than usual. Parental
anxiety, Chi thought. But then, to his amazement, just before he stepped
through the shuttle, she slipped something in his jeans pocket and whispered,
“Consider impact before you consider benefit, my son.”
    Now
all of it, all of them, gone.
    *  
*   *
    Chi
strides up the boulevard through the park. Apprehension knocks in his chest,
yielding to anger. Mistakes. He can’t afford mistakes, his or anyone else’s.
What if the Archivists haven’t found the right Hot Dim Spot? What if the SOL
Project Directors haven’t chosen the right Open Time Loop? Mistakes happen. The
Save Betty Project proved just how deadly mistakes could turn out to be.
    Chi
quickens his pace, apprehension and anger deepening to dread. What if he
returns to the Portals of the Past in seventy-six days and the shuttle fails to
connect to this Now? What if he can’t translate-transmit? What if he can’t return
to the Portals, at all?
    Then
he’s trapped in Closed Time Loop, that’s what. A CTL, from which there is no
escape, never has been an escape, never will be an escape. When does a CTL
begin? No one knows. It just happens.
    Chi
slows, breathing