Twist in the Tale: Top 10

TEMPUS

“To Travel is an experience. To Travel well is an art.”

- Amir Dhurvisala

The place was packed. All the patrons of Homer's were well on their way to having fully fermented all of their internal organs, the I can shout louder than you can shout portion of the evening in full-swing.

Kali pushed through the crowd palms-first, gently touching the backs and arms of everyone she passed. Nobody paid her any mind, but nobody ever did; invisibility was her superpower. She was terrible at being famous.

It was the name, really. Nobody knew her face, and those that did weren't generally pleased to see it. Kali had a short fuse and an offensively large fee for service - nobody called her unless they were beyond desperate.

"Saul," she said, sliding into the booth.

He grimaced at her. "How much did you just take?" he asked, gesturing to her hands.

She shrugged. "Not enough that any of them will notice."

An hour here, a day there... Once, out of boredom, she'd stolen an entire week from the man ahead of her in line at Fleet Central Processing, and he hadn't even blinked. In fairness, FCP felt more like purgatory than temporal folds did; time ceased to exist within its bland white walls.

"It's hard for people to wrap their minds around," her father had said to her, once. "Time is both a finite and infinite resource. It's always running out, but never ends. Most people will choose to ignore it, until it's too late."

Ignorance was Kali's bread and butter, as it turned out. Steal from the benighted, sell to the rapacious.

Papa would be so proud.

Saul sighed and slid her a pitcher. Kali raised the glass mug in thanks and chugged it, wiping her upper lip with the back of her hand as she slammed the empty glass down on the table.

"Why am I here, Saul?"

"Your father is missing."

She rolled her eyes. "I left the nineties for this?"

"Nobody has seen him in months. Not since that thing in Istanbul."

Kali frowned. "Is he off-world?"

Saul shook his head. "I checked with the FCP. He hasn’t left the planet. I think... Kali, I think he went Travelling, again."

Kali leaned back in the booth, pressed the back of her head to the cool leather, and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Why would he do that?" Her voice was sharp. Chastising. You're supposed to keep an eye on him, Saul.

"He went looking for you, Kali."

"We both know I'm the last person he'd ever go looking for."

Saul sighed. It was a weary, bone-deep tired kind of sound that made Kali feel like she needed a nap. He slid his hand across the table and gently petted her fingers.

Just a nip. He won't notice half-an-hour.

She suppressed the voice in her head and the tingle in her palms. It was bad form to steal time from a friend.

"He misses you," Saul said quietly.

"The last time I saw him, he told me I didn't deserve the name Dhurvisala. Quote: Commodifying Travel is an abomination. Unquote."

"Amir never did have any business sense."

Kali snorted. "I always liked you, Saul. But there's no way he was looking for me. Maybe he's just drunk in a bar somewhere."

"Or maybe he's trying to fix things."

"By Travelling? You know he can't."

Her father might have had all the time in the world at his fingertips, but he had a bum ticker and couldn't handle the jumps anymore. The irony was that he couldn't just jump ahead to whenever a heart would become available for him. He was stuck waiting, watching the clock, humbled minute by minute just like everyone else.

To the world, he was a Mad Scientist turned Father Time. To her, he'd just been Papa. For the longest time, she'd thought it was normal to live in a different decade every day. To wake up one morning to dinosaurs and the next to glass skyscrapers higher than the clouds. Even now, she struggled with the concept of linear time, struggled to remember that the rest of the world couldn't Travel. Not on their own, anyway.

No matter how many years forward she went, nobody else ever figured out how to do it.

"Our little secret," he'd told her, the day he'd shown her how to Travel.

It stayed with them to the grave, apparently.

She continued to smuggle Oligarchs and criminals, politicians and military leaders, even a few celebrities through time in exchange for an exorbitant cache of their lifespan; in a world with nowhere left to hide, the only place to go was When, and the only person who could do it was Kali. She had more lifetimes than she could ever use stored and ready, but her stupid, stubborn father wouldn't take them.

Blood minutes, he'd called them, that last, awful time she'd seen him.

She sighed, her healthy heart giving a little squeeze, and she flicked her hand showering everyone in Homer's with an extra year.

Saul raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

Good call, Old Timer.

If her father had Travelled in his state, there was a good chance he was dead. But there was also a chance - albeit a small one - that he'd made one last strategic jump.

When would he go, knowing only I could find him?

Kali swallowed hard, her palms tingling. She stood and rubbed her hands together. 

“I need to get to my ship.”

"You know When he is," Saul said.

She nodded. "I do."

He reached out and squeezed her arm. "Safe Travels, Kali."

I'm coming home, Papa.

It was time.