Chapter 4 Hazel
Hazel
STATION C, DATE UNKNOWN
Hazel’s legs wobble. ‘I need to sit down.’
Robin zooms into the gloom, returning with a wheely chair in need of reupholstery.
Hazel sinks onto it, arranging the blanket so her legs don’t touch the exposed stuffing.
Time travel. Right. She exhales hard, frowns, and laces her fingers together.
Her hands tremble, but her grip is fierce. In-for-out-for-hold-for-out-for—
‘Let’s dial back, CHARL1E. Start with the basics. Where am I, exactly?’ She catches herself before he can answer. ‘I mean, where am I located chronologically and geographically?’
‘Stand by for responses to two queries. Response one of two: chronologically, you have travelled 2,521 years into the future from your home present.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Negative, it is a fact. Please stand by for response two of two.’
She sighs. ‘Off you go.’
‘Response two of two: geographically, you are fifty-five degrees north and three degrees west.’
‘Be more specific about my geographic location.’
CHARL1E presents her with a string of numbers that may as well be the Shipping News. She rubs her eyes and seriously reconsiders taking the paracetamol. ‘No more longitude or latitude information. Instead, relate my geographic location to other landmarks that a person from my time would recognise.’
‘Complying. Hazel Brandt, you are thirty point three kilometres from the ruins of a city known in your time as Edinburgh, Scotland.’
Another flicker from the void—a tourist’s eye view of a grey castle, muddied hiking tracks, and rows of quaint shops with colourful doors—but this place is nothing like that. ‘I haven’t been here before, have I?’
‘Negative: according to our records you have not visited Station C before.’
Hazel glances at the logo stamped onto Robin’s hull. ‘What does Station C have to do with time travel?’
‘Station C is where the centrifuge of the time travel machine, the Arch, was housed.’
‘Was?’
‘Your disastrous arrival this afternoon destroyed it.’
Hazel cocks her head at CHARL1E’s use of an adjective.
Chatbots and LLMs can use adjectives, that’s not a problem: The issue is that she hasn’t prompted CHARL1E to use them.
Goosebumps come out on her arms as she wonders what selection criteria he uses for descriptive words.
Whatever they are, they seem more sophisticated than she first assumed, and she’s not entirely comfortable with the implications of that.
What else is CHARL1E hiding? She tucks her arms inside the blanket and slides a nail under a sticky patch.
The small resulting tug of pain from the glue keeps her grounded.
‘I certainly didn’t mean to cause a disaster. ’
‘Intent and effect are not synonymous: Whatever your intent, the effect remains the same. You built and activated the catopthura yourself, as all Travellers must, and it caused disaster.’
The void in her head rustles, presenting a memory: anxiously twiddling wristwatch cogs, almost dropping a wafer-thin clay pot, clicking on a power socket, and hearing tangled wires start humming.
They’d used instructions from somewhere …
odd … and made a device to take some other Traveller there and bring Hazel here, throwing their bodies symmetrically across time.
Her bones ache as if from a long journey, and she sags for want of a welcoming hug at her arrival. ‘Is there anyone else around?’
‘Define “around.”’
Hazel rubs her face. ‘Gosh, CHARL1E, put it together yourself. I mean at Station C.’
‘The Tinys are at Station C. I am at Station C—’
She tsks. ‘Are there any other human beings at Station C?’
‘There are two homo sapiens that are not Hazel Brandt at Station C: Keepers Lilith and Huxley Tiu-McNunn are outside, approximately two meters west of the Arch Dome and one point eight meters underground.’
‘Underground?’
‘Affirmative.’
Hazel blinks, calculating. One point eight meters—six feet. The other bodies in the explosion, which a mistake in her building of the catopthura caused. Deaths that she caused. ‘CHARL1E, what’s the current physical status of Lilith and Huxley?’
‘There is a discrepancy between the Tinys’ records and mine about their physical status. I believe they are deceased. The Tinys believe they have passed on.’
‘Those words are synonymous, you know.’ She holds up a hand as CHARL1E attempts to correct her.
‘Whatever the pedantic definitions, the meaning for me is the same.’ She puts her head in her hands, squirming with guilt and loneliness.
The Arch being destroyed was her fault. She didn’t mean to, of course not, but that doesn’t erase the fact that her actions led to Lilith and Huxley’s deaths.
‘So, just to clarify, I am the only living human being at Station C?’
‘Affirmative.’
His single word reply is another stab of shame. ‘Is anyone else coming here? Any humans, I mean?’
‘Negative. No other humans are expected to arrive in the foreseeable future.’
‘No more Travellers, no one?’
‘Affirmative. Given that you have destroyed the Arch, the arrival of further Travellers is impossible.’
She’s alone, then. Utterly and completely. Battening down her rising panic and writhing remorse, she focusses on her next question. She knows what it should be, but she’s too frightened to ask, and instead blurts, ‘Can I get a cup of tea?’
Robin trundles away like a puppy dog.
‘Protocol dictates that I must warn you,’ CHARL1E says, ‘that the Tinys will not make you satisfactory tea.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Hazel grunts, watching Teaspoon tap the heart monitor as if the ECG blips might be faulty. It’s a wonder she ever suspected these robots of being responsible for the explosion.
‘Please take into consideration when you are imbibing the tea that it is not the Tinys’ fault the beverage is subpar. They are forced to work within limited parameters.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ But when the tea does arrive an awkward sixty seconds later, it is both mysteriously cold and overloaded with tannin. Hazel spits it back into the cup. ‘It tastes like petrol!’
‘I recommend drinking it nonetheless, your body will benefit from its hydrating properties. Moreover, you may wish for some caffeine before you ask your next question.’
She looks up at his screens of code. ‘You already know my next question?’
‘It is highly probable you are going to ask why you are here. Every Traveller does.’
She nods, sipping more tea to bide her time. Familiarity does not improve it.
‘You may also wish to take the paracetamol-like medication you are hiding in your hand now. Our conversation will be hindered by your pain.’
Hazel hides a snarl in her cup but swallows the tablets. She’ll have to figure out his surveillance systems later. ‘Alright, fire away: Why am I here?’
The code on CHARL1E’s screens flows at twice its usual rate. ‘Hazel Brandt, what do you remember about Earth?’
Her bruising pulses. ‘What does it matter?’
‘There is a high probability it will be salient.’
‘Fine. What do I remember about Earth?’ She blows her cheeks out, nursing the concept of ‘world’ in her mind.
‘Earth is a planet that has a mix of ocean and land mass. It orbits a star called the Sun in the Milky Way galaxy. The oceans are populated by fish, the land by other creatures, mostly insects and mammals—’
‘This is a clinical description.’
Clinical. Hazel’s skin crawls as again she wonders about his judgement processes. ‘It’s what I remember.’
CHARL1E pauses, and Hazel wishes she could read his code properly, so she’d know what he was up to.
When his voice returns, his words are more hesitant, and if CHARL1E were human, Hazel might guess he’d put down the paper he was reading from.
‘You are telling me what you recall—facts, figures. I require you to supply what you remember—feelings, happenings. Do you understand?’
Hazel is surprised by the nuance. ‘I think so.’
On the screens, his code glows brighter. ‘Proceed.’
‘Let me see. I remember bluebells in woods. Frogs hiding under rocks. My hair tangled with salt after swimming in the sea. Sunlight through oak leaves.’
‘What else?’
Hazel guesses what CHARL1E wants to hear. ‘Code. I remember code. I think I worked with robots?’
‘That is interesting but not salient. Return to the concept of Earth.’
‘I remember heat. Brie melting on a plate left in the sun at a picnic. Swarms of ladybirds—then the next year no ladybirds at all. Floods … some where I was, but mostly elsewhere, worse, on the news. The peaks of roofs through muddied water.’
‘Elaborate. What else was on the news?’
‘Wars, murders, politicians—’
‘Not salient. Please combine the concepts of Earth and news.’
‘OK. Storms. Tornados. Wildfires. Drought, problems with crops.’ Hazel falls silent as images wash through her: animal carcasses in cremated rainforests; acid rain dissolving ancient monuments; waves rising up to devour cliffsides; storms with the power of a nuclear arsenal; air so thick with fumes and smoke that masks were issued; the Gulf Stream slowing, slowing; and heat heat heat.
This remembering hurts, a different kind of ache to that in her broken ribs.
The pain is at once outside of her body and in its every atom.
Worse, the inundation of memories won’t coalesce.
She can’t figure out what it all means, but she desperately wants it to stop.
She wants more paracetamol, and to find a bed and curl up and sleep for days, years, ever—
But CHARL1E’s code has paused, waiting for her answer, so she guesses the images’ meaning. ‘I remember we were at war with the Earth.’
‘That is a complex statement.’
‘It is correct?’
‘Undetermined. However, it is not salient. Rephrase.’
‘I remember that the Earth was changing and that was difficult for human beings.’
‘That is a true statement. However, it is not salient. Rephrase.’