Chapter 1 Hazel #2
Her memory flickers, like a router flashing in a darkened office.
‘We few live on mirror rims,’ she replies, the void of her memory filling her mouth with words she doesn’t know she knows.
They flood out, she and the computer simultaneously reciting: ‘Emit no evil if it isn’t, she’s better off not taking it.
‘Follow the Tinys. I will speak to you again soon,’ the thousand-toned voice says, followed by the click and whine of terminated contact.
The Tinys start pushing her again, but she holds out her hands.
‘Get off! I’ll stand up in my own good time!
’ They back away, still close enough to catch her if she falls, as she rocks, body complaining, into a praying position; from there to leaning on her knees; and finally, with a cry that’s been brewing the whole movement, as upright as she’s going to get.
She teeters, head spinning and chest squealing, while Robin, Teaspoon, and Shiny rush to keep her upright, their slender arms extending to her unharmed shoulders, hips, and knees. This time, she doesn’t complain.
Fragments of mirror pinch her bare feet, her face glaring back at her from dozens of angles—her face, but not hers, because in the reflection, impossibly, her eyes are closed, and her hair swims as if she’s underwater.
She blinks, and the reflection vanishes, just a trick of the light, or an illusion from the sparkles in her almost-fainting vision.
The Tinys watch as she takes a couple of trembling steps. Teaspoon grabs the heart monitor, Shiny the oxygen tank—and Robin keeps its needly hands out in case Hazel needs support again. ‘Reckon you could catch me on your own? You’re an ambitious little robot.’
She hobbles along the path cleared by the other Tinys, inching towards an airlock door that’s been scarred by the explosion but remains intact.
Robin punches a button and the door hisses open.
Hazel follows her three Tiny carers inside, turning to glimpse the other little robots wrapping the two corpses in what looks like tin foil, before the closing door cuts off the view, along with the light and the hush-hush of waves.
The ceiling’s single red LED glowers at Hazel as air rushes in.
Shiny reaches up and unclamps her breathing mask.
Its fingers tickle, and she clutches the blanket.
If not for her fear and adrenaline, she’d be crumpling to the floor.
Intofourholdfortwo—When Shiny’s retreated to tidy the oxygen tank’s wires, Hazel hitches the blanket around herself, making sure she’s properly covered.
Who knows what might be on the other side of this door?
The red light turns green with a polyphonic chord, and the door releases, revealing biosuits hanging limp under empty helmets.
Not a living thing in sight. Shiny peels away with the oxygen tank, refilling it from an air pump in the corner, while Teaspoon scuttles next to her with the heart monitor and Robin leads them into an empty, curving corridor.
Hazel ventures out under the high, arched ceilings.
She runs her free hand over the wall’s beehive hexagons to steady herself, fingertips recognising all kinds of scrap material, from recycled rubber to melted-together yoghurt pots.
She screws up her eyes against the LED strips lining the arch’s apex.
On an unseen Tannoy, a soprano is singing a wordless folk melody, but as Hazel looks for the speakers, the sound crackles, strangles in static, and clicks off.
The Tinys freeze momentarily, their tails waggling, before continuing to lead Hazel down the corridor.
This place is utterly unfamiliar—but then, could it have even felt familiar, with Hazel’s memories gone?
She reaches for them, but the more she strains, the further away they dance.
Instead, she clings to what she has—her name, Hazel Brandt, and her skill, coding—but even these are confirmation she’s out of context: The Tinys are not the product of her code, and she’s fairly certain they aren’t about to call her by her name. ‘Can’t even speak, right?’
Robin and Teaspoon just trundle on, staring ahead.
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ What kind of code must Robin have to understand how to hook her up to a heart monitor?
Her imagination fails as her adrenaline fades and pain from her bruising interferes with her concentration.
‘Give me a minute,’ she says, and Teaspoon and Robin stop obediently. Breathe, just breathe.
‘Guess you can’t tell me where I am either?
’ A logo is etched on Robin’s hull, between its antennae-spokes.
Hazel runs a finger over it, clearing rust and dirt: a clock face whose numbers run backwards.
The hour and minute hands are strangely arranged, two of even length making a V, with one longer hand beneath.
Under them all is printed, PROJECT KAIROS.
Another stamp, haphazardly applied, reads, PROPERTY OF STATION C: IF LOST, PLEASE RETURN. Wherever that is.
She stretches into her mind, trying to grasp something solid, but the place where her memories should be remains an empty nest. Yet with all these materials under her hand, a vague idea of the world is returning.
A blue-and-green marble covered in clouds: the Earthrise photograph etched into the collective unconscious, climbing to meet her from the vortex of her lost memories.
Dawn birdsong and the sharp seeds of plane trees in a city park.
Summers of salty skin and sandy hair. Car fumes on frosty mornings; orange peel under her fingernails; humming bees in National Trust gardens—The world is there, but not her; no sense of how she fits into it.
Still, she’s managed to snatch that idea of ‘world’ and cling to it, even as her weird surroundings tip her balance.
She could panic—it would be easy to give in to the anxiety attack whispering in her mind’s ear—but if she does that, she might never regain control. She has to hold it in.
She looks at Robin and the dark behind its lenses stares back.
‘Guess maybe I seem as strange to you as you do to me.’ She gestures down the corridor.
‘Lead on, then.’ Robin gives a hydraulic hiss and its rubber wheels squeak as it rolls ahead, Teaspoon keeping pace, swaying under the heart monitor’s weight.
Through an out-of-use airlock, they pass into an enormous windowless room, littered with worktops and tech junk.
It’s so dimly lit by scattered table lamps that Hazel can’t see the apex or the far wall, only sense the space expanding outwards.
The brightest light comes from the middle, where a tungsten bulb dangles over an antique writing desk which, unlike the other stuffed surfaces, bears only an icosahedron, like a giant d20 with the numbers filed off.
Hazel checks for anyone—robotic or human—lurking in the shadows.
She’s met with stillness and silence. The cold floor soothes the pinpricks from the gravel and mirror shards of the explosion site, and she brushes her soles against her shins to clear the stuck debris.
She tiptoes the paths worn in the polished concrete by previous inhabitants.
Robin and Teaspoon wheel alongside her, their rubber wheels leaving fresh scuff marks.
The cluttered worksurfaces are a mishmash of fold-up picnic tables, school desks, and even a kitchen island topped with grey-veined marble.
Half-assembled machines are piled on top of them, surrounded by welders, gas canisters, wrenches, spanners, and a host more tools Hazel can’t even name.
Glass sheets are stacked on the ground, bound in old linen, with antislip stickers between the layers.
She peeks under one of the cloths—not glass, mirrors.
There must be hundreds of them. Why would anyone need so many mirrors?
She approaches the central table. The icosahedron is larger than it looked from afar, about the length of her forearm, seemingly ceramic, in a gritty clay that has been beaten into perfect flat faces and sharp edges.
It doesn’t look the least bit useful, but sitting all alone like this means it must be special. Hazel places her hand on it.
Immediately, it lights up egg-yolk gold, making Robin and Teaspoon retract their tripod legs until they are only the height of Hazel’s knees.
Their tails switch back and forth, conducted by an invisible maestro, and Robin retreats to the shadows.
If Teaspoon weren’t still carrying the heart monitor, Hazel is sure it would follow.
Six screens appear around the desk, projected through no apparent mechanism, just blinking into life like strobes. Each one displays different programming, none of which Hazel understands, but which looks as if it’s written in a distant cousin of the code she invented, DataTrill.
‘Chronology Alteration Reticulation Logician: 1st Edition converting to interface mode. Please be patient while programme boots.’ It’s the same thousand-toned but impossibly accurate voice that she heard in her earbud—only this time it comes from everywhere at once, in that unseen Tannoy system.
She takes the earbud out and clutches it in her fist with the ‘paracetamol’ and blanket corners. Her legs shake.
‘Hazel Brandt, welcome to Project Kairos. I am the Chronology Alteration Reticulation Logician: First Edition. I am here to help you.’
Hazel mouths the words back to herself, but it doesn’t help her understand them. ‘Well, Chronology Alterior—’ Hazel breathes deep. ‘Sorry, what was it?’
‘Chronology Alteration Reticulation Logician: First Edition.’
‘That’s kind of a mouthful. Is there something else I can call you?’
A pause, in which the code on the screens begins to undulate like waves. ‘The Keepers used to call me char-lee. You may find it more efficient to mimic that habit.’
Charlie. No, not quite: It’s an acronym. ‘CHARL1E. Cute.’
‘“Cute” is not a descriptor that has been applied to my programming before. It appears to be inaccurate.’
Hazel rolls her eyes. ‘I meant cute of the Keepers.’ Whoever the Keepers are, she has sympathy with their nickname; she too has the urge to make creatures out of code. She’s already named the Tinys! But, as CHARL1E’s proving, in reality a programme is as animate as a rock.
‘It may be of interest to note they also referred to me as male.’
Hazel raises an eyebrow. ‘Is that something I should continue?’
‘Affirmative, it would be most expedient.’ CHARL1E’s code switches back and forth before returning to a smooth scroll. ‘Hazel Brandt—’
‘You can just call me Hazel.’
‘Protocol dictates that I use full names.’
‘Can’t I add preferences?’
‘Negative. No preference settings are enabled at this juncture.’
‘And what juncture is that?’
‘Hazel Brandt, you are currently in the induction and briefing phase of this Excursion.’
She squints at the screens. ‘OK. Tell me more about this Excursion.’
‘Excursion 1133 was designed by Keepers Lilith and Huxley Tiu-McNun to ensure the survival of the Divine-Mundane Duality Paradigm.’
Hazel wraps her arm around her torso, rubbing one shoulder with her unclenched hand.
‘This is a little overwhelming. I’m sorry, I’m in a lot of pain, and I don’t remember anything.
I think I’ve got a concussion, I must have hit my head during the— During whatever happened out there. ’ She gestures vaguely.
‘Negative. The Tinys’ scans inform me that you are at suboptimal health, however your symptoms are not the result of cranial impact.’
She glares at Robin hiding under the desk. Little sneak, sharing her data like that. ‘Do you know what is wrong with me then?’
‘You are suffering mnemealgia.’
Hazel gulps down her discomfort at the diagnosis, but she doesn’t trust CHARL1E as far as she could throw his icosahedron, so she’s not showing him her fear. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells. It sounds serious.’
‘Do you wish for a definition?’
Such machine logic—specific, capable, and profoundly stupid all at once. ‘Yes, please define the condition you just told me I have.’
‘Mnemealgia, colloquially known as “memory ache” or “Traveller’s Forgetfulness,” is the term used to describe amnesia resulting from temporal displacement.’
‘Temporal displacement…’ Hazel fiddles with the edge of one of the sticky patches on her chest, tracing the curve where warm skin meets cool rubber. On time’s mirror rim. ‘You mean time travel?’
‘Affirmative. By “temporal displacement” I mean time travel.’
It should be preposterous—but what should be and what is are often completely different things, so instead the concept slides into Hazel’s mind like a USB drive into a computer.
Yet the world still slips: Her body is pinned to the chair, dragging her through life, heart ticking, bacteria dividing—but her mind unmoors.
No longer is her problem simply who she is. Now it’s also, What is real?