Page 28 (1/2)

To Dr William Colfer

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN…

Toward the end of the twentieth century, Scottish professor Charles S a time tunnel to Victorian London (constructed froy density, duh) Within months the FBI had established the Witness Anonyram to stash federal witnesses in the past When the professor learned that Colonel Box of WARP division was planning to use the wori his codes with hiesture, really, since Colonel Box and his entire unit had disappeared on a mission only days before

Smart returned to the twenty-first century some years later, but he was far too dead to share his secrets His arrival had quantu FBI consultant Chevron Savano and even younger Riley, a boy from Victorian London ished to escape the career of assassin mapped out for him by his evil master, the conjurer and murderer for hire Albert Garrick

Garrick pursued his apprentice to the future and back, but he was ultimately cut adrift in the Smarthole with no means to reassemble his physical person

More stuff happened, too High adventure, close calls, and belly laughs—but that’s another story (it’s quite the story, to be honest) and has no placeup this report

So all’s well that ends well for our spirited pair of young adventurers?

For Chevie, not so much, as ill find out

For Riley, even less so, which will become almost immediately apparent

Chevie’s brief presence in Victorian London caused temporal ripples, which were to have a dire effect on the present Simply put, Chevron Savano was noticed in the past by the previously mentioned Colonel Box, who had actually set up shop in Victorian London As a result, the colonel was prompted to have Riley murdered and thenthe downfall of ence of the Boxite Empire If Chevie had not been noticed, then Box would have stuck to his original Eence Day and the cataco his plans forever

Chevie now lives as a Boxite cadet in a ti inal h For cases like Chevie’s, Professor Smart predicted two hypothetical outcomes: either the tis so that he/she may live some kind of normal life, or the visions will become so vivid that their discordance with actual events will drive the subject insane

When we join the story, Chevron Savano’s visions are becos handy, they certainly would not be wasted on a mere army cadet

If you go back in tio back and assassinate Rasputin So is old Grigori dead, or isn’t he?

—Professor Charles Smart

BOXITE YOUTH ACADEMY, PRESENT-DAY LONDON, NEW ALBION, 115 BC (BOXITE CALENDAR)

London Town

Once there had been a es of Dickens’s young trickster Dodger, or of Sherlock Hol his mind to a three-pipe proble-do that oven through London’s nificent avenues and shadowy network of backstreets and alleys For centuries people had journeyed froland’s capital to see where their favorite stories were set, or perhaps to aze at the wonders of Trafalgar Square or Big Ben

Not anyone

For one thing, the tourist industry did not really exist in the Boxite Eo to iant statue of the Blessed Colonel, whose stone eyes watched over the city and everyone in it And Big Ben was not the only landed under by the Boxites Brick by brick, the E London in its own iray, and implacable

Als were constructed out of poured concrete with little in the way of distinguishing marks, just row upon row of dimly lit s, lidded by half-drawn blinds As the older London buildings orn away by acid rain, they were demolished and replaced by utility blocks dropped in place by a-copters The blocks were pre-wired and plumbed and just required connection to the main supplies to be fully operational London’s history was being erased on a daily basis

One such building that had fallen into disrepair and was due to be dynamited in six months’ time was the Boxite Youth Academy, the officer school for the Empire’s military, where cadets from all over the world came to be indoctrinated in the way of the Blessed Colonel

Inside this most austere academy no attempt had beenof the cadets Benches were hard stone, and thin mattresses were laid on flat planks The Spartan ed to play to their strengths but instead traded to one of the Boxite Empire’s harsher institutes

Inside her cubicle, seventeen-year-old Cadet Chevron Savano woke before the ’s reveille siren but kept her eyes closed in order to prepare herself for the day’s nightmares

No, not nighth the Blessed Colonel knows I have plenty of those These are day visions

Chevie tugged the cot’s rough arhts could not even cast a glow on the insides of her eyelids

What’s wrong with s that aren’t there?

These visions were interfering catastrophically with her training at the Boxite Youth Academy Chevie’s scores had dipped quite sharply in recent days, so much so that the file clipped to the foot of her bed had an orange card tucked into the folder

An orange card A review The first warning and perhaps her last if she could not make a satisfactory show of herself The academy rules were sacrosanct One serious slip, and her place would be offered to the next in line

And it was a long line Millions of souls long

Her revieas today, and if it went badly, she could be sold to a Box soldier factory in Dublin—or worse, to the mines in Newcastle as a spade monkey

Chevie shuddered

A spade monkey? Surely that would be a fate worse than death

Chevron could pinpoint exactly when the visions started It had been six ht she’d sleepwalked down to the academy’s musty basement and collapsed in a heap ofropes of drenched, saturated cloth that looped her body like dark serpents She had been wearing neither nightshirt nor slippers, just this strange material that dissolved into slop as she slooke Then her stoel that turned to light particles and drifted away like fireflies

Light? she re

A?

Is this death?

But her breath had co whoops, and Chevie’s heart had hammered a testimony to her hold on life

How did I get here?

Where is here?

Cadet Savano had covered herself with an old dropcloth yanked from a pile of paint cans and she’d stus as weak as a newborn’s

I aht

This is where the Timepod was, dummy, said a voice in her head You’ve come back

This voice, which was to beconored it

Chevie had pounded on the locked door, calling out for help, which arrived eventually in the luht watch: two Thundercats, Clover Vallicose and Lunka Witmeyer, secret police attached to the academy So Chevie was in the academy, at least

Thundercats? Chevie had thought She’d giggled and was instantly horrified

Thundercats? Why would that nale around Thundercats They were licensed to use necessary and unnecessary force up to, but not exceeding, the infliction of mortal wounds

How do you exceed mortal wounds? wondered Chevie