Blue Skies

Quinton shivered despite the oppressive heat. He always felt unsteady when he returned to Earth, but the added symptoms of temporal displacement added anguish to misery. They told him time travel could cause fatigue and nausea, but he never imagined it would be this intense. He leaned against a tree and tried to reset his neural chip, but he couldn’t pick up a signal. He thought his coordinates were precise, but perhaps he was off – it looked like he landed in the middle of the woods. Shaking off his sickness, he got up and made his way to a clearing.

It didn’t take him long to find the house. Good, he thought, the coordinates were correct. This was Mindy Dixon’s home. Timing was critical. The fate of humanity depended on it.

Quinton took a deep breath and basked in the sunshine. It had been a long time since he breathed fresh air. Earth had been dimmed in perpetual fog for two decades. An entire generation had never seen set foot on terran soil. It was ironic. A century of conservation efforts were wiped out in a single attack. The Vvrek had been cunning in their attack. They watched Earth from afar for centuries, waiting for the right time to strike. As soon as the neural implant technology was taken worldwide they struck; downloading a virus into the satellite system that linked the chips. Humans were paralyzed by neural shock while the vile creatures attacked. By the time the Vvrek disabled the virus they had rounded up the strongest humans to keep as slaves on their ships and began the process of terraforming Earth into a Methane-based planet.

Quinton still couldn’t get a neural signal from the satellite. That was odd. The satellites should be prepping for worldwide activation if he hit the right timeframe. The link would help him locate Mindy’s precise coordinates so he could deliver the chip and proceed with his plan. Mindy Dixon was the world’s leading expert on the neural technology and the leader of the Resistance. She had worked on this plan for nearly fifteen years. This information was vital in her plan to take back the planet and if it failed, all hope really was lost.
Looking at his wrist chronometer, Quinton realized that he didn’t have time to wait any longer. He would have to move now. He walked around the house and was shocked to see a moving van and several trucks parked front of the house. A short woman with shoulder-length brown hair came out the door. She smiled.

“You look lost? Are you one of the movers, alarm installers, or cable guys?”

Quinton jumped. “I’m sorry, I am a bit confused.”

“I understand. Moving is a pain, but this is a circus. Three groups of people working at the same time. It’s madness!” She pulled a rubber band from her pocket and put her hair in a ponytail. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? I’m Crystal Dixon. My husband, Drake, is around here somewhere. Which group are you with?”

Quinton almost went into neural shock. No wonder he couldn’t get a signal. There weren’t any satellites for his neural chip to link to! His location coordinates were right, but his timing coordinates were wrong. He was supposed to go to May 23, 2109; the day before the Vvrek attack. This was May 23, 2009 – the day the Dixon family homeplace was formally established.

Drake and Crystal Dixon were Mindy’s grandparents. His timing coordinates were off by 100 years.

Quinton wiped sweat from his brow. He could only do one more time jump or it would fry his neural chip. He didn’t have time to tell Crystal the truth. She would think he was crazy. Mindy’s father, Layne, wouldn’t be born for another seven years. He had to figure out a way to deliver the message now so Mindy could find it, just in case his second jump went wrong. Looking at the service people roaming around the house, he had an idea.

“I’m with the alarm guys. Sorry I’m late. I got lost on the way out here.”

Crystal smiled. “I understand. We are a bit isolated out here. Come on it,” she motioned him into the house.

Quinton entered the home. It was overwhelming to have a look at living history. There was the antique dining room set; the heirloom crystal, the antique table in the den - so many relics right here in everyday life. It was amazing, but Quinton didn’t have time to be amazed. He had to figure out how to deliver this message and get out before the other service people realized he didn’t belong with any of their groups.

Most of the people seemed to be downstairs, so he decided to move upstairs. It was a bit more organized – obviously Drake and Crystal wanted to get their bedroom unpacked first. He studied the relics surrounding him for a place to stash his message, but he couldn’t find anyplace where it would be assured of staying hidden for a century. He was fixing to leave the room when a picture caught his eye.

It was a cross stitch of a dragon and wizard. Quinton couldn’t resist picking it up. This was one of the most important heirlooms in the Dixon family treasure. Mindy said her grandmother spent three years hand-stitching that picture. It always generated a lot of conversation at holiday parties.

The family homeplace. That would be this house! Three generations of Dixon’s lived in this home, ending with Mindy just before the Vvrek attack.

Quinton took the chip from his pocket and studied it. It was just small enough to fit, and if he moved quickly this could work. He found a knife, packing tape, and a small tube of super glue in one of the upstairs rooms. Returning to the bedroom, he cut a small opening in the top of the frame, taped the chip to the back of the cross-stitch, and carefully sealed the cut closed with the super glue. Perfect. You couldn’t tell it had been tampered with and you couldn’t see the chip through the black background and heavy stitching on the pattern unless you held a light directly in front of it, which was unlikely to happen in day to day living. He ran downstairs and straight out the front door, into the woods. He entered new coordinates in his wrist chronometer and hit the “Transport” button, praying he would get it right this time. The world vanished in a swirl of color and motion.

Quinton came to face down on the ground, chilled to the bone. Pushing himself up, he fought off another bought of nausea before the signal to his neural chip reactivated. Good, he was back in a time where they worked. He slowly got to his feet and took in his surroundings. It was dark. The house stood before him with lights glowing and a tree sparkling from a downstairs window. This was the right place. But was it the right time?

A short woman stepped on the porch and waved at him. “Quinton, come inside. Must you trample through the woods at every Christmas party?”

Quinton smiled. That was Mindy alright, and this was close enough to the right time. It was December 23, 2108 and this was Mindy's annual Christmas party for her research team. He walked in the house. “I think it’s amazing that you’ve managed to preserve the family homeplace so well for over a hundred years!”

Mindy handed him a glass of wine. “Neural technology is not my only talent. Of course, I’ve had two generations of help and preservation working in my favor.” She walked to the center of the large den and chimed her glass.

“I would like to offer a toast to my wonderful research team. Thanks to your efforts the neural interface project will go worldwide in May. This is a great step forward for humanity. Now everybody on the planet will reap the benefits of the neural chips. The human mind and body will work in ways we could only dream of a century ago. Memory and cognitive function will increase, disease will be a thing of the past, and life expectancies are projected to double. Congratulations on a job well done!”

Everybody cheered. It was an accomplishment a long time in the making. Only Quinton knew that their progress stood on the edge of a knife. The message had been planted. Now it was time to deliver it. He stepped to the mantle.

“Mindy, this is an outstanding picture,” he said, studying the cross stitch. “The detail is absolutely exquisite.”

She smiled. “That’s my favorite family heirloom. Grandma Crystal spent three years cross stitching that pattern. She finished it just before they moved in this home.”She squinted and studied it closer in the light of a candle burning on the mantel. “Do you see something glowing slightly right there?” She said, pointing to the top corner of the pattern.

Quniton held a candle up to the frame. Sure enough, the light glinted on something. “You’re right. What is that?” He carefully removed it from the wall. The rest of the group gathered around him. “There’s only one way to find out. Do you mind?”

Mindy flinched. “I’d rather you didn’t, but curiosity has the best of me.”

Somebody handed Quinton a small pocket knife. He carefully cut a small opening near the frame and pulled out a silver chip. Everybody gasped.

“A computer chip,” Mindy said, taking it from Quinton. “That’s amazing. It looks like a modern chip, but this picture is over a century old.”

“Has it ever been reframed?” Quinton asked.

“That’s the original frame,” Mindy said. “I guess we should see what’s on this chip.”

They took the chip to her computer workstation and plugged it in. The screen covered in data and schematics.
“This is amazing,” Mindy said. “It looks like schematics to build an encryption system into the neural interface satellite that will automatically reject foreign programming.”

“I thought we already had a system in place,” Quinton said.

“We do, but it’s elementary. This is much more advanced. It has an elaborate firewall system that is set to recognize familiar authorization and programming codes and automatically reject anything that violates those patterns.” She leaned back in her chair. “I’ve been working on something like this for the past few months, but couldn’t figure out how to get the system to recognize the patterns in our codes. Whoever loaded this chip did it.”

Quinton smiled, remembering the nights she stayed up late trying to set up those pattern recognitions. She almost got caught a few times, but she was cunning enough that the Vvrek never suspected that she had the ability to finish what she started, especially after they loaded the neural depressants into the system. The Vvrek wanted their humans just smart enough to be good servants, but not smart enough to figure a way out of their bondage. They didn’t realize that human intelligence was enhanced by the neural chips; not determined by it. They could suppress the chip function, but they couldn’t suppress good, old fashioned grey matter.

“That’s amazing,” he said. “We should implement this immediately.”

Mindy laughed. “Take time off for the Christmas and New Year holiday at least! But yes, we will implement this first thing January 2.”

“Like you ever take off,” Quinton said. “I know you’ll study this the whole time you’re off work.”

She smiled. “You know me too well.” She glanced at the screen. “Wait, what’s this? There’s something strange at the end of this file. It says ‘the shield code is 44825.’ What does that mean?”

Quinton shrugged. “Who knows? Whoever stashed that chip must have a reason for passing it along. It might come in handy.”

Mindy closed the file and shut down her computer station. “That’s enough work for now. Let’s get back to the party!”

Mindy took Quinton’s arm just before he headed back to the den. “Quinton, what’s going on? How would a modern computer chip find its way into a century old picture?”

Quinton shrugged. “There have been experiments in time travel over the past few years, and our long range monitoring satellites have picked up unidentified objects on the outer edges of the solar system.” He snickered. “Perhaps the aliens are watching and somebody came back to warn us.”

Mindy laughed. “I suppose we would be wise to heed their advice,” she said, slipping the chip in her pocket and heading downstairs.

Quinton breathed a sigh of relief. The mission was a success. Mindy wouldn’t let that chip out of her sight. When the Vvrek attacked, the neural satellite system would lock them out and they could use the shield codes to destroy Vvrek ships.

Quinton smiled as he set to repairing the cross stitch again. Twenty years of alien domination had been thwarted. Humanity would live under blue skies again.

Word Count: 2,175