Temporal Trap

Estelle and I were comfortable on our journeys so far. Whether we spoke to each other or walked in silence, we knew what the other was thinking. All our work was productive and effective. Sticking a stranger into that situation made everything worse. There was constant tension in the air. Even if Estelle tried her charm to make Nicodeme feel welcome, I still didn’t trust him. He didn’t even tell us how he got here and always changed the topic. Estelle didn’t want to push it. Our journey became silent for the most part and the silence wasn’t pleasant any more.

For the most part I kept back and let Estelle lead the way, with Nicodeme walking next to her. It was the easiest way for me to keep an eye on him. I just needed to remind myself to also keep my attention on the surroundings so that we weren’t flanked or surprised from behind. My gaze kept drifting towards his exoskeleton. It was a pure wonder. It was almost silent to the point of being eerie. I wondered how long the battery would last for it. The packs that we used for the coil gun and plasma cutter wouldn’t last a day. In spite of that, Nicodeme didn’t seem to be worried about it. Maybe he is hiding extra batteries. If we get rid of him, I must examine him thoroughly.

“What are you doing?” Estelle asked. Nicodeme slowed down and stopped. Estelle turned toward him and her movements seemed sluggish.

“Stop,” I shouted. Nicodeme hadn’t stopped. He was frozen in the middle of a step. “Step to the left,” I instructed Estelle, speaking slowly. She nodded after a while and began moving outward. The first step took about half of a minute, but every subsequent one was faster.

“That was close. We almost wasted a lot of time,” Estelle said. “How deep do you think we are?” We both looked up at the sky. Some clouds were speeding by, but the Sun seemed to be stationary.

“It doesn’t look too bad. Come on, let’s find a way around this mess,” I said and made as if to leave. Estelle cleared her throat. “Oh please it’s fine, I should think. We could go to ATLAS and be back without him missing a beat. We would be essentially doing him a favour.”

“For the love of God Tan, please stop. I understand your objection, I even agree with it somewhat. But stop making this more difficult than it has to be. We gave our word and we will see to his safety until he decides to leave or does something to break our trust.”

“You speak as if there is any trust to start with,” I murmured.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” I sighed. I cut a long stick from a shrub and left some side branches as a hook. A rope would do no good in this situation. “Help me from outside the greater area of influence.”

“If you ever have a chance to save a life you should take it,” Estelle said in a quiet voice. I glanced at her and she was looking down with a sorrowful expression.

“Even if it turns out to be a mistake?” I felt mean asking that.

“Even so,” the words were barely more than a whisper. She was likely thinking about Priscilla. I gave her arm a squeeze as I passed by.

In all that time Nicodeme hadn’t moved but he did turn his head in our general direction. I moved close to where Estelle had come before. I looked back and saw her erratic movements. I pushed the stick towards Nicodeme, which felt like pushing into water at first, then gelatine and in the end like drying concrete. The stick seemed to grow a little shorter as it penetrated further into the anomaly. Estelle was also pushing from a safe distance. With a fair amount of effort I was able to reach Nicodeme and hook him with the stick. I nodded back to Estelle and began pulling backwards. Estelle braced herself against a tree trunk and pulled with all her might. Her fast motions made it look fairly comical like a very old movie. The pull sent all three of us sprawling to the ground. I moved almost as fast as Estelle and even Nicodeme was very slowly rising. After two more attempts we were able to exit the most intense part of the aberrant temporal region.

Nicodeme was groaning on the ground. “How do you feel?” Estelle asked.

“How do you think?” He replied in a curt manner. He then took a deep breath. “I mean, thank you. I’m fine. It’s the first time I saw something like that. I have heard of it but thought it was exaggerated. Do you see things like this a lot?”

“We run in to them now and again,” Estelle said. I grunted in agreement. “Mostly it’s easy enough to see them coming from afar but sometimes they sneak up on you.”

“I see,” Nicodeme said and looked around with a disturbed expression.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye out for them,” Estelle said. I fought back the urge to point out that she had walked directly into one of those anomalies and would’ve gone deeper inside if I hadn’t stopped her.

Temporal anomalies were easy enough to see if you paid attention. The simplest signs were any stationary floating objects including leaves and animals. Less obvious was the lack of trees and grass swaying in the wind. The biggest problem was the unpredictable gradient of these abnormalities. If changes were subtle, they were a lot harder to detect. On the other hand failing to spot a sharp change could have disastrous consequences. I had heard a story that someone was minding his own business walking along the forest, when a superfast mutant charged at him. Luckily it had slowed down when it got near, but I could imagine the utter terror as a bear sized beast is a blur rushing toward you like a train. It was possible that the whole thing was just a made up story or rumour that spun out of control, but at the same time it was the sort of thing I could easily imagine happening inside the Zone.

Even though we had detected the anomaly fast, escaping it had cost us most of the day. We set up camp beneath a large tree and ate only rations. As the dusk fell, we dared not move away from the others. Even if we were still experiencing some minor time dilation, it was safer to stick together. We were fairly certain we would not lose more than a couple of hours. Getting lost in both space and time was a horrifying prospect. At least that meant that by the time it was bright again, we were quite well rested. We ended up taking a substantial detour around the temporal anomaly which involved a fair deal of chucking stones, watching leaves and animals, and keeping track of the Sun.