A Chronetic Perspective (The Chronography Records Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE Fatality

  CHAPTER TWO Eccentricity

  CHAPTER THREE Captivity

  CHAPTER FOUR Confidentiality

  CHAPTER FIVE Implausibility

  CHAPTER SIX Observability

  CHAPTER SEVEN Indignity

  CHAPTER EIGHT Sensitivity

  CHAPTER NINE Compatibility

  CHAPTER TEN Possibility

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Animosity

  CHAPTER TWELVE Inability

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Priority

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Ambiguity

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Perplexity

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Necessity

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Safety

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Asperity

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Proximity

  CHAPTER TWENTY Sociability

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Complicity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Anti-Gravity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Instability

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Infirmity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Intensity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Immobility

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Paternity

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Reality

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Liability

  CHAPTER THIRTY Anxiety

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Tasty

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Opportunity

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Sentimentality

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Flammability

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Insularity

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Verity

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Unity

  Author Note

  Author Bio

  A CHRONETIC PERSPECTIVE

  Kim K. O'Hara

  © 2016 by Kim K. O'Hara

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it through a subscription service, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to www.amazon.com and purchase or borrow your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Cover design by Sam O’Hara

  www.samofsorts.com

  To my father, whose life only overlapped mine by eight years.

  whose love for all things mathematical endures in me,

  and whose face I always wished I could see just one more time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Kellianne Rumsey, my writing partner, whose encouragement and ideas have been so essential to this novel; to my husband, Michael O’Hara, for doing without me for hours as I worked to complete this book and carrying many family obligations on his own during that time; to my daughter, Sam O’Hara, who not only served as one of my beta readers but showed me how much she believed in me by pouring her considerable creative talent into my cover design; to my other daughter, Jennifer O’Hara, who inspires me with her own writing; to my twin sister, Kathy Kreps, who offered me practical feedback during numerous stages including reading the entire final draft; to Daniel Myers, Kendra Galeana, Marjenna Gittings, and Nancy Shasteen for their visions of the future of medicine; to Nancy Riggle for her feedback on the future of prisons; to Peggy Holstine, Christopher Lee Danielson, Kermit Kiser, Daniel Myers (again), Annie Bouffiou, Connie Barclay, Victorine Leiske, and Carrie Howard, my beta readers, who gave me both corrections and suggestions (which undoubtedly improved the book you hold in your hands); to Grace Friberg, who graciously donated her time for the cover photo shoot; to the Clean Indie Reads Facebook group for always being ready to chime in with ideas when I needed a wider range of opinions, and to the NaNoWriMo community as a whole for inspiring this venture in the first place.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fatality

  LAKE WASHINGTON, Seattle, WA. 1530, Saturday, August 1, 2207.

  The air was still and Lake Washington was as smooth as the polished trophy awaiting him at the finish line. With the shore water lapping around his water skates, Wade Morgan did a quick twist-toe maneuver, his signature move and an excellent way to loosen up before the big wave-generating machines kicked into gear and the starting gun sounded. He heard the cheers from the water bunnies lining the shore and acknowledged them with another twist and the flash of a smile. He knew he could have his pick from the crowd as soon as the race was over.

  At twenty-two, he was the star of the wave skimming world.

  Monday, he would be back at work, two months out of college and a vice president already, heir apparent to his father’s company and also, of course, his father’s massive fortune and outrageous monthly paycheck and expense account. Not that the man was due to die any time soon, but that didn’t matter. Wade was the epitome of the favored son. His future lay before him, and it was bright.

  The wave motors thrummed to life, three meters beneath the surface of the lake. Powerful elongated helix cylinders began their ponderous turns under the “Devine Corp: 10 Years on Top” banner that identified the race’s sponsor, the company that built the wave machines. A second banner proclaimed, “We control the wind and the waves.”

  That his own skates were made by the same corporation meant he accepted only the best. He took his sport seriously.

  Now it was five minutes before the race. Wade’s focus narrowed, his eyes on the water, ready for the laser beams that would instantly tell him how to plan his strategy. Exactly four minutes before the starting signal, floating buoys would shoot out the brilliant lasers to mark the 2K route through the water. Anyone who crossed the boundaries would be instantly disqualified.

  As soon as the lasers carved the air, Wade’s eyes found the critical points: where he would accelerate, where he would cut off his closest competitors, where he would seal his victory with a quick sprint home.

  The starting gun sounded and the skimmers shot off as one from the shore. Wade pushed ahead well before the first turn, setting himself up for the win. That was the easy one. In a move he’d practiced a thousand times, he lunged forward and leaned left, tilting his right skate enough to activate his side jets and swirl him easily past the buoy, mere centimeters from the inside boundary and extending his lead by several meters.

  Good. He’d need a lead for the second curve, the most difficult—not just because it required a hairpin turn, but also because the wave machines worked together there to attempt to force competitors outside the boundaries. The unwary skimmer would swing too wide and leave the course. The newbies, barely wet behind the ears, might overcompensate and crash into the inner buoy or get tangled in the lines. He’d seen firsthand the damage that could cause, but quickly pushed images of injuries out of his head to focus on the race. Those dangers were easily avoided by experienced skimmers and not any kind of threat at all for Wade. That’s where the twist-toe maneuver would come into play and give him dominance. Piece of cake.

  He could no longer hear the crowds, but he sensed their cheers and yelps when he whipped his way through the challenge he was born to face and pulled ahead again. The sharp bend gave him his best chance to gauge his lead: a good twelve meters ahead of the second-place racer.

  One more turn and he’d be home free.

  Later, analysts would have lengthy discussions on what caused the deep trough
just past the third turn. Was it the fifth-place skimmer, who cut too close to the first buoy and grabbed wildly at the post that anchored the wave machine? Was it a poorly calculated wave pattern? Was it a malfunction in the machine itself? And what caused the turbine shield to wrench loose at just that moment? They would reach no consensus, but on one thing they could all agree: It was a great tragedy in the sport of wave skimming.

  When Wade hit the trough, he was in the middle of a dip to gain speed for the final sprint. Abruptly in the air, his skates met no resistance and his feet slid out from under him. As he plunged backward, his fall took him so close to the wave machine that when he righted himself to kick to the surface, the machine caught his leg and brutally drug him in. The blood reached the surface before his mangled body arrived, one piece at a time.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eccentricity

  DANI’S APARTMENT, First Hill, Seattle, WA. 0730, Friday, September 8, 2215.

  A sharp rap rattled the door frame. Danarin Adams brushed her right temple with her forefinger, activating her eyescreen and pushing her blond hair behind her ear in one smooth motion. A semi-transparent image overlaid her normal vision to show a visitor leaning against the wall in the hallway outside her apartment door.

  She smiled. She had known who it was, even before she saw the familiar mop of auburn hair, always a little too long to be fashionable. Who else would knock instead of letting the irisscan announce him? She hooked her bag with one arm and gestured with the other to open the door.

  At the whoosh, Lexil Myles bounded off the wall and put on his cap — a cabbie hat. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, but—are you sure? Shouldn’t the field operatives be doing this?”

  “Why should they have all the fun?” An impish grin crossed his face. “You’re not backing out, are you?”

  She shook her head. “Just wanted to be sure. You’re the boss—let’s go!”

  It still seemed strange to her to be hopping into a helicar with the head of her division. Just three months before, as an intern, Dani had lived out her work days in the bowels of the massive Research Institute of Anthropology & Chronographic History (RIACH) with limited human contact. She had known her bosses by name and face but had rarely spoken to any of them.

  If she hadn’t been so enthralled with the field of chronography from an early age, and especially with the TimeSearch project, she’d have quit long ago. But knowing that objects held chronetic energies which could let researchers see, hear, and smell the past through neurological hookups as if they were right there, living it all over again—well, who wouldn’t want that?

  “Top down?” He tilted his head, letting her choose.

  She nodded. “Sure, why not?” After three days of nearly constant rain, the blue sky was hard to resist. And the early September weather was still warm enough to feel like summer, once the morning chill burned off.

  He made deft gestures over the helicar’s control panel. The top slid back and the helicar lifted them up and out the fourth floor exit of the parking garage. Automatic controls took over to weave them through traffic, heading east toward the Cascade Mountains. This trip was more than just time away from the office. It felt like an escape, as if they were playing hooky from high school, stealing a day away. She had to remind herself that she was twenty-three, and he was twenty-five, and they’d been out of high school for quite a few years.

  Still, she felt a little guilty to be out in the sunshine when the rest of the research staff was stuck monitoring the sensors, watching for disruptions, gathering data to feed test equations. But it hadn’t been her idea. It had been his. Just the day before, when they were both digging into some complicated mathematics, trying to coax out a solution and failing miserably, he had slapped his pencil down on the table, stretched, and rubbed his neck.

  “I need a hot shower.”

  Then he grinned. “Let’s have a play day tomorrow. Go out in the field and get some source objects. I’ll bet I can find an urgent work order somewhere.”

  It had taken her a couple of seconds to agree, but only because her thoughts were still on the hot shower. Did she want to spend a day with him? No question. She enjoyed every moment she spent with him, and it wasn’t just because they worked so well together.

  She shook her head at the memory and glanced over at him. She was startled to see him looking at her. He held her gaze.

  “Do you know your face shows everything you’re thinking about?”

  She blushed, and then she composed herself. He couldn’t have seen that.

  “Oh yeah? What was I thinking about?”

  “About the rest of the team, stuck inside the building. And…other things.” One side of his mouth curled into a smile, and his eyebrows twitched upward suggestively. Was he teasing her, or did he really mean—

  Focus on the team, she told herself. Dodge the rest. “It would have been nice to bring them along.”

  “Would it?” He raised his eyebrows again, pausing just long enough to make her squirm, and then he added, “I think it would be pretty crowded in a two-seater.”

  She changed the subject. “Where are we heading, anyway?”

  “You’ll see. Just be patient.”

  Back before more than half of RIACH's board of directors and head researchers were implicated in a blackmailing ring, she would have known exactly where she was going. She was just an intern then, but she would have gotten all the details from an impersonal message on a viewwall.

  Of course, she wouldn’t have known why she was doing any of it. And she wouldn’t have had such pleasant company.

  “Those boots waterproof?” he asked.

  She followed his gaze to her feet. She wasn’t wearing boots. She was wearing flexshoes, but she knew what he meant.

  “They can be.” She fingered the line between the soles and uppers, and the top edges folded up to cover her ankles. She couldn’t see the rest of the transformation, but she knew the ventilation holes were filling.

  “Good. Never know what we’ll find. See that little lake down there?”

  “Lake Sammamish? You call that little?”

  “No, not that one. Look east of it, right below us to the left.”

  “Okay, I see it.”

  “When I was a kid, we’d all get in the helicar, my mom and dad and I, and find lakes to go swimming in. That was one of them—Pine Lake. I swam across it more than once.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “Could hardly ever get my dad away from business things. But he loved to swim. I did too.”

  It wasn’t long before they were in the foothills. The autopilot raised their elevation to 450 feet and continued on, roughly following the river below.

  “Snoqualmie River, if you were wondering,” Lexil said.

  She recognized the name. Snoqualmie Pass was the easiest place to cross the mountains if you started from Seattle. “Are we going over the pass, then?”

  “No, not quite that far. Getting curious?” He grinned.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You ask that, of a scientist? I was born curious.”

  They gathered source objects for several reasons. Most commonly, they helped establish historical facts, resolve personal disputes, or solve crimes. Out here in the foothills of the Cascades, she didn’t think they’d be doing historical research.

  Ahead, a rounded mountain loomed. Houses dotted the slopes. Mudshields formed peaks above and behind them. She remembered reading about the slope houses and how they had to be anchored deep within the mountain. The pressures of population had inspired technological advances, turning geosafety into a hot career path. She wasn’t sure she would be able to trust the anchor if it were her house. Or the mudshield, for that matter.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “I thought you could tell by my expression.”

  “Not this time.”

  She pointed toward the slope ahead. “I was thinking that I would never want to live like that, in a house stuck onto
the side of a mountain.”

  “Nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there?”

  “Even a visit would make me nervous. What if there was an earthquake?”

  “You don’t think the earthquake tamers could hold it back?”

  She snorted. She had no respect for pseudoscience.

  “Hey, I heard that they got that last 5.2 down to a 3.8, barely noticeable. Used huge drums or something.”

  She squinted with one eye and looked at him sideways. “You don’t really believe it was ever a 5.2, do you?”

  He frowned and folded his arms. “Science can do anything, right? Are you a doubter? You know what they say, ‘Doubt rules solutions out.’” He held the mock glare for a good ten seconds. Then he grinned.

  She laughed. He was fun, especially when he got away from the lab.

  “What’s the name of this mountain, anyway?” she asked.

  “Mount Si. There’s a legend about it, if you want to hear.”

  She nodded.

  “It seems the moon had ordered a rope to be made between the earth and the sky. But a fox and a blue jay climbed the rope and stole the sun. The moon chased them back down the rope and fell to his death on the ground below.”

  “And?”

  “Well, that’s the moon’s dead body you see before you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Not a very appealing image. Also, that doesn’t look much like the moon.”

  “You have a disadvantage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You lack perspective. Perspective matters.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, because I’m looking at it from the air?”

  “Yes, you’re up too high, and also….” He paused until the pause got awkward and she looked at him. “You were born too late. Back in that century, from the ground, it looked just like the moon.”

  “Which you know because you were there, of course.”

  “Of course. Do you doubt me? Remember what I said about doubt.”