Daily Scifi Shorts, Sketches, & Starts

Always Summer: Pilot Episode (Part 1)

The roar of American Airlines Flight 127 departing from Portland's Runway 28 woke Stony Reyynolds up, just as it had the seven other times he'd been here. He blinked and rose to a sitting position. His mouth was dry--it had been the other seven times too. It would be next time, he knew--if there was a next time. He swung himself out of bed, staggered over to the compact refrigerator,  and retrieved the bottle of water that had been placed there for him. It had been there the other seven times, and would be the next--if there was a next time. He twisted the cap off, dropped it, and upended the bottle, drinking the whole thing down in one go. He placed the bottle on the counter and tilted his head up. "Caspar?" He said.
    There was no response. He was alone in the room, but Caspar, the Klepi watcher assigned to him, could hear him on the medallion device inside his head.
    Reyynolds stepped into the bathroom, flicked the light on, and squinted against it. This would be his eighth time around, the eighth time he'd woke up in Hampton Inn Room 441, the eighth time he'd drank the bottle of water. It wasn't the eighth time he'd guzzled it down, and it wasn't the eighth time he'd dropped the cap on the floor. That was his doing--free will--and each small variation in his activities would change the flow, resulting in differences in this loop that he hadn't experienced before. One of those differences, he knew, could lead to a rescue--but that wouldn't be apparent for 71 days.
    Reyynolds looked at his face in the mirror. Eight times through a 71-day loop was 568 days--a year and a half he'd spent in the summer of 2018, always starting on June 20--today, from his present perspective--and ending on August 31. At 5:54 pm. The first time he experienced the defect, he was taken completely by surprise; the second time he was more prepared for it; the third time it was merely uncomfortable. The fourth time it was almost routine. And this was the seventh time he'd been pulled away from 5:54 pm on the evening of Wednesday, August 31, 2018 and back to Hampton Inn Room 441 and the bottle of water that was waiting for him there on the morning of June 20, 2018.
    Reyynolds remembered lectures at the Institute for Klepi Studies at Zaltrow University on Mars. "The technique involves a number of technologies unknown to you which must remain so," the Klepi's translator box intoned. "But we can offer the service, in a limited way, under our observation."
    Someone in the back piped up. "What about the grandfather paradox?"
    The Klepi turned in that direction.  "There is no such paradox," he answered. "What you call the Many Worlds interpretation is the closest to correct. If you should take any action in the past that prevents your own existence later on, the Universe simply divides at that point. In one of them, you exist, having not done whatever it is that interfered with your own existence. The other collapses into a fractal and is pinched off, form a looping bubble, and slowly evaporates. There are many, less dramatic ways this can occur," the Klepi said. "This is why it is increasingly dangerous the farther back you go. The farther back, the more small actions can lead to a fractal loop such as what a Grandfather Paradox situation creates." The Klepi scanned the audience. "We place a 452 - year cap on travel to the past," he said. "This provides some margin of safety for both you and for us."
    A woman near the front rose. "Is it possible for a human in the human past to interfere with Klepi events in the timestream?"
    "Possible, but unlikely," the Klepi said. "We do not offer the technique to humans after 2446 or so."
    "Why that particular year?" she asked.
    "This is the time that human events start impacting the Klepi side of the stream in a way that could be negative."
    There was a knock at the door. "Right on time," Reyynolds muttered. "You've got the wrong room," he called.
    There was a moment of silence, and then a woman's voice. "Oh, yes. Excuse me." The first time he'd been here he had stumbled around to put the pants they left for him on, then he answered the door to find a surprised elderly woman at the door. "My husband," she had begun, her eyes averting from Reyynolds' bare chest. They came across the placard next to the door where the number '15' was posted in gold letters. "Oh, excuse me," she had said as she scurried off, rapping on the adjacent door--14--and then disappearing into it when it was opened. By now, he knew to expect her early morning mistake.
    And yet, not everything was the same. On the second time through, he noticed change, variation, creeping into the world. It started innocently enough--he had flipped on the bedside light the first time but neglected to the second time. Since the light wasn't on, he'd turned on the light in the bathroom where he hadn't done so the first time. The woman had still knocked on the door, but the second time she had said "Where is my--" before the eye-aversion-and-realization-of-mistake action occurred, not merely "My husband--". The fourth time through, Caspar had answered his call, and they had discussed the loop briefly. Caspar had told him that the loop would continue until either he discovered some small action he could take--it could be anything--that would lead to a break in the loop, that he should try things, keep notes. Nothing could be taken from loop to loop, but writing it down would help him recall it in the next loop. In the line where the discussion with Caspar took place that morning, the woman hadn't come at all. But this time, Caspar didn't answer and the woman's visit had occurred. He closed the door and sat on the bed, wondering what to do now. He knew what he had done on the last seven times through. The mission--observing a particular eight-year-old boy on a particular day and at a particular place, was not difficult. The trick was what to do, what variation to inject, to break the loop and get back home.
    With this in mind, Reyynolds took a shower--as he had before--and dressed in the clothes that had been left for him in the room. They were always the same too. Period-authentic blue jeans and Polo shirts. He'd made a study of this period--he was a specialist in early to mid- 21st Century politics, particularly those of the United States and Europe. Reyynolds had studied what was called modern American English, as distinguished from postmodern American English which followed starting about 2150 and then Speng, from 2190 through to the Twenty-four the Century; he'd lived in a colony of modern American English students for two full years to prepare for the trip, but he still had some trouble understanding aspects of what people said, particularly young African Americans of this era, about which little was known.