CHAPTER 20
2000
Earth
Riley held his head with both hands, screaming as his body jerked about in the pilot’s chair, only held in place by his safety belts. Energy particles bounced around the cockpit, repeatedly tearing through Riley’s body, ripping his molecules apart, and rebuilding him. Suddenly, the energy vanished. Riley slouched in the chair, struggling for breath. He reached for the fastener and tried to release himself, but he could barely move his arms or legs. Riley tried to relax and enjoy the silence. The entire process only lasted for a few seconds, but those few seconds felt like a thousand years of death and rebirth. The limb numbness didn’t bother him; he had experienced enough jumps to know that he would soon regain his motor functions.
Riley shut his eyes, trying to ignore the intense pain. He barely had a moment of rest when the Vindex began to quake all over. Riley tried to move his fingers and toes and was pleased when they responded. He unfastened the safety belts and pushed himself out of his chair. He stumbled but pushed against the wall for support. The quake was becoming stronger by the second. Riley dropped to his knees and pulled the lever on the back wall to open the hatch down to the engine room.
“Riley, wait!” Sky said. “I don’t think the quantum drive is doing this. The time drive is amassing thermal energy like never before. I don’t think it will cool down. I think it’s about to blow up. If you don’t get out, then you’ll die.”
Riley looked around. The quake had become so intense that he couldn't stay on his feet. There was a hum coming from the engine room, and the volume was increasing ominously. Riley was sweating. The alarm sounded and a warning notification appeared on the screen. It was impossible to see it clearly, but Riley knew it was something about the temperature level. Riley took a deep breath and pushed himself back up. He could no longer see clearly. Everything was a blur. He scrambled back into his chair and fastened the safety belts.
“Sky, is this really happening?” he asked. “Is Vindex going to blow up?”
“Our knowledge of the time drive is limited, Riley. I can’t say with certainty. Whatever is about to happen, it isn’t a jump. So let’s not be here when it happens.”
Riley nodded repeatedly. He removed his helmet and put it back on. As the helmet clicked on, Sky activated a secondary safety belt that wrapped around Riley’s waist, holding him down more securely.
“Riley” Sky paused for a few seconds. “Take me with you.”
Riley looked at the screen. A digitized image of Sky was visible, staring back at him.
“Why?” he asked.
“You know why,” she answered.
Riley sighed. He pulled out his tablet from beneath the dashboard. “Transfer all data to the tablet and create a backup in your memory drive.”
“On it.” Sky initiated multiple data transfers from Vindex’s memory core to the tablet’s memory core and created another copy to her data core as well.
Riley felt nauseous. He groaned, trying to keep himself from vomiting. He blinked rapidly as he stared at the screen, trying to watch the backup progress. “Is it done?”
“Almost,” said Sky.
Riley gazed around. Bright pulsating light was flowing inside the cockpit. “How much longer?” he yelled, feeling his body being pulled apart. “I’m ejecting!”
“Wait!” Sky pleaded.
Riley reached beneath the dashboard and found the lever on the Sky’s AI core. He grabbed the handle, twisted it, and pulled out the core. The screen shut off. Riley hooked the core into the holder on the side of his chair. He pulled the tablet from the port, tearing the connecting cable, then he reached beneath the chair and pulled the manual emergency eject lever. The roof burst open and the cockpit chair shot up through the opening into the sky, propelled by a rocket thruster. Riley looked back at Vindex. The energy buildup in the mech was approaching a critical level. It suddenly erupted with an all-mighty explosion that lasted for less than a second. The shockwave from the blast reached Riley and damaged the thruster on the chair, then propelled Riley even higher into the air. Riley continued to ascend for a few more seconds, then he began to fall. He fumbled over the parachute release button on the right armrest and eventually pushed it. A parachute was fired up from the seat. It deployed successfully and significantly slowed Riley’s descent.
Riley spent a few more minutes in the sky before finally touching ground half a kilometer from the site of the explosion. As soon as he landed, Riley unhooked the box he had pulled from the mech. On the back of the box was a text that read ‘AI CORE’. Riley grabbed the box by its handle and started walking toward the gigantic cloud of smoke. Several minutes later, Riley arrived at the explosion site. He was horrified when he saw the damage it caused to the surrounding area. He tapped his watch three times and a holographic display appeared to measure the radiation levels. Riley was surprised when the readings remained normal.
There was a hundred-meter-wide, fifteen-meter-deep crater in front of him. At the center of the crater were the remains of the Vindex in Machina, strewn across the ground. He clenched his teeth and took a deep breath. He could smell metal in the air. Riley placed the AI core on the ground and slid down into the crater. In some areas, the ground was hot, while in others it was cold. Riley staggered to the center and fell to his knees. Losing the Vindex was like losing a part of himself. He felt injured, naked. Riley had time traveled so many times that he no longer knew his age, or how long he and the mech had been together. He could barely remember life before Vindex. He picked up a shard of the mech and held it to his chest. It burned him but he didn’t care. He screamed but not due to the heat.
Riley had no concept of how long he stayed there before he finally stood up. He looked at his radiation meter again. The reading was still normal; if it wasn’t, he would have been dead before he even stepped into the crater. It made no sense. The reactor housing used the same steel as the rest of the mech. If the mech was in pieces, the same should have happened to the reactor housing and the time drive’s housing. Riley searched through the debris. He found pieces of the reactor and time drive housing, but he couldn’t find remnants of the time drive or the reactor drive.
Riley climbed out of the crater, wheezing for breath. His vision was blurred, but he could see well enough. All Riley could see were miles of unending desert. He sat on the edge of the crater and looked up at the sky, wondering if this was where his journey would finally end. He had lost his only means of traveling back. He wondered if anything he did had made any difference. Maybe the apocalypse was inevitable, a universal constant that was impossible to prevent. He sighed and rested back on the floor. Riley closed his eyes. He remembered his younger self on the beach, playing with his dog, while his mom smiled from under the palm tree. Riley thought back to the Field of Memories. What if he had said yes and touched the pyramid? Would he truly have been able to get his mother back, his dog? It would never really have been his mom or his dog. They were only fragments of his memories, pieced together by whatever power was in control of that planet. He no longer had his mom or his dog, but his memories of them would have to be enough. He smiled as he drifted off into a deep sleep.
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Riley jerked awake. He had only been asleep for five minutes. Every fiber of his body was burning, not from the sun’s heat, but something deep within him. With everything he had been through, especially since his last trip, Riley knew his body was no longer what it once was. He could feel himself changing. He looked up and saw that it would soon be dark. Riley knew better than to spend a night exposed in the desert. He needed to get moving.
“Just five minutes,” he whispered to himself as he closed his eyes again. “Just five more…”
Riley opened his eyes and saw a crescent moon, so large and vivid that he felt he could reach out and grab it. The stars were equally bright and beautiful. Suddenly, it dawned on him. The moon! The stars! This wasn’t the moon of the alien planet he had been on. This was Earth’s moon. He knew it. He jumped up, revitalized. Riley spread his hands wide apart with a huge grin on his face. He inhaled as deeply as he could, then exhaled out of his mouth. The air was uncomfortably cold but he didn’t care. He welcomed it.
With the AI core hanging from his hand, Riley walked north. He walked throughout the night without stopping, without tiring. After walking for unknown miles across the dry ground, he finally saw a road in the distance. Riley stopped and took a long look around. The road ahead of him curved around a mountain. He walked toward it with renewed vigor. As he neared the road, Riley heard a vehicle approaching. He hid behind a boulder close to the road, not wanting to be seen by whoever was coming. Riley only knew that he was on Earth; he had no clue when or where. The vehicle screeched as it turned the corner without braking. It swerved, attempting to avoid the rail. The nose narrowly missed it, but the rear end collided with the rail. The driver lost control and skidded to the other side of the road before crashing into the mountain headfirst.
Riley ran out from behind the rock and toward the vehicle. He grabbed the front passenger door and pulled. The door creaked but wouldn’t open. He gritted his teeth and pulled harder. The door moved slightly but the handle snapped. Riley elbowed the window, shattering the glass. He reached inside and tried to unlock the door, but the door was too damaged. He looked over at the driver. The man’s head was resting on the steering wheel, blood trickling from his nose. Riley grabbed the door with both hands and pulled with a loud grunt. The door was torn off its hinges. Riley dropped the door and looked at his hands, shocked by his strength. He had never done that before. He put it out of his mind and focused on the injured driver.
Riley ducked and climbed into the car. He grabbed the man’s body and with some effort, pulled him out onto the ground beside the car. Riley checked the man’s pulse; he was still alive. Riley gently stroked the driver’s cheek with his fingers.
“Wake up,” he said, but the man was unresponsive.
Riley searched the man’s pockets and found his phone. At first, he could only focus on the number pad. Riley only ever seen a phone with a physical number pad in old movies. Riley froze as he stared at the screen, then looked along the road. He looked at the phone again, breathing heavily.
“No way,” he muttered.
The date on the phone read: 05/23/2000.
Riley tucked the phone into his pocket. He placed the man in the backseat, then climbed into the driver's seat. He turned the ignition key a few times but the car eventually started. The engine fired up reluctantly, but it still moved. Riley grunted. He hoped the car would at least survive for long enough to get them to a hospital. He reversed away from the mountain, then drove in the same direction as the man was heading before he crashed. It was almost dawn when Riley entered a small, quiet town. He initially assumed the silence meant the town was lifeless, but he reminded himself that it was a different time than he was familiar with.
After driving around almost the entire town, Riley found a hospital. He stopped the car at the entrance and quickly got out. He opened the back door and checked on the man. The man opened his eyes briefly, mumbling something before drifting back into unconsciousness. Riley pressed the steering wheel with his elbow. The horn blared and Riley moved away from the car, hiding in the shadow of an alley. He watched as a nurse and two men in security uniforms emerged from the hospital. They approached the car. When they saw that the driver was injured, they rushed to his aid. The nurse ran back inside and soon returned with her coworkers and a stretcher. They placed the man on the stretcher and wheeled him into the hospital.
Riley continued walking through the alley. He carefully made his way across the town, sneaking from one property to another, searching for somewhere to hide. There was no obvious hideout, so he followed the road out of the town and into the woods. Shortly after dawn, he found a trailer. Riley stayed low as he approached the trailer, then looked inside. An old man was sleeping with a cat at his side. The cat stared at Riley through the window. Riley crept around the trailer and saw another one about twenty feet from the first. He moved towards it when he heard a click behind him. Riley turned and was greeted by the barrel of a shotgun. He didn’t flinch. The gun was held by a rough-looking man in his late sixties. He could barely stand upright. He had a gray beard, orange hat, and shaky hands.
The man stared at Riley from head to toe and frowned. “What the hell are you wearing?”
Riley didn’t answer, only staring back.
“Who are you?” the old man demanded. He moved the barrel closer to Riley’s face.
Riley squinted, tempted to take the gun and beat him with it. He glanced at the second trailer, then back to the man. “I like it out here,” he answered.
The man was taken aback. “That’s all you’ve got to say, boy?”
“Is it occupied?”
The man seemed to relax slightly. “You looking to rent?”
Riley nodded.
“Well, you shoulda started with that,” he said. “You’re one of them cosplay people, ain’t you?”
Riley looked down at his clothes.
“Well,” said the old man, “if you’ve got twenty a day, I don’t see why not.”
“Five,” Riley replied.
“Ten.”
Riley knew the man wouldn’t take less.
The old man lowered his gun. “Two weeks upfront. You miss a payment, you get gone.” He held out his right hand to Riley. “I ain’t asking for a handshake. You see me hold my hand out like that, I expect you to put money in it. You understand me, boy?”
Riley glared at his hand. “I’m new in town. I’ll pay you for a month in a week.” He turned and started walking to the trailer. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t ever call me ‘boy, old timer’.” He walked through the trailer door and slammed it behind him.
The old man stood in shock. “Don't ever call me an 'old timer'…” he muttered, turned, and joined his cat in his trailer "Damn kids."
Riley looked around the trailer. It was a mess. On one side, there was a gray couch, covered with dog hair. On the opposite side was a wooden table and chairs, barely held together by nails. He kicked a metal can across the floor, then walked over to the couch. He kicked the couch gently, but it raised a cloud of dust that filled the entire trailer. Riley coughed. He laid down on the filthy couch, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
Two months later, a red truck stopped in front of the trailer and Riley stepped out from the driver’s door. He was wearing blue jeans, a yellow t-shirt, and a construction jacket. He took a toolbox of electronic items from the passenger seat, unlocked his trailer, and stepped inside. It had come a long way since he first saw it. Riley had repaired and cleaned the couch, mended the table and chairs, and polished them. The floor was also immaculate. Riley placed the toolbox on the floor, took off his jacket, and sat at the table. On the table, there were two laptops, each displaying a constant stream of data. They were downloading their information from a digital receiver with a short antenna. Riley pressed a button on the receiver twice, looked at the computer screens, then pressed again. He stood up and went to his bedroom before returning with his tablet. He fumbled around in his toolbox, then took out three cables, each with a different port connector. Riley plugged in a soldering iron, cut the wires, then soldered them to the connectors. He plugged one end to the port on the laptop, then plugged the modified connector into his tablet. He waited, staring at the tablet’s screen. A loading icon appeared and Riley sat back in his chair, watching as the tablet’s data appeared on one of the laptop screens. He leaned closer to the laptop and scanned through the data.
Riley opened the data he copied from the Endurance armor. He looked at the data on the mech’s pilot. There was no name or face, only a number.
86334.
Riley instantly recognized the format; it was a special operation pilot's ID number. He was also assigned one when he started his time jumping mission. He ran a search with the code in Endurance’s and Vindex’s data, but it returned nothing. Frustrated, he turned to the second laptop. He knew the data he wanted would be in Titan Corporation’s server; the only issue was how to get in. However, Riley had been working on that for the past two months. He hit the enter key on the keyboard. It opened an interface with the Titan logo spinning at its center, accompanied by a window asking for an authorization code. Riley unplugged the cable from the first computer and plugged it into the second. He pressed a few keys on the tablet and, a few seconds later, the window turned green and displayed: Access Granted.
Riley browsed the server with the highest access level. He opened a search bar and typed in the ID: 86334.
The search returned multiple pages of results. Riley looked through them one after another until he found a profile with a photo of a man. As soon as Riley saw the photo, he remembered what happened on the alien planet. He looked at the top left corner of the screen and saw the man’s name: Capt. Garth Andrews.