No Place

 

by David Gray

 

“Hey Xander, when did you get back?” My occasional buddy Walker stomps up to the bar and demands, “Another beer. Something darker this time.” He’s everything you’d expect from a timeline scavenger: thick as an ox, in and out of lines quickly, and never far from his gear. 

 

I answer, “A few days ago.”

 

I don’t say I’m still regretting my decision to return. My last timeline had been perfect, the best I’ve found yet, and I should have stayed. Well, it was almost perfect, but there’s no crying about it now. It’s lost in the infinite branches of the multiverse. That’s the first thing you learn as a line-jumper: Once you leave, there’s no going back.

 

Taking a healthy chug of his beer, Walker asks, “You still lookin’ for utopias?”

 

“Afraid so. I’m not getting any younger, so it’s time to settle down…and not in this shitty timeline.”

 

“I hear you. You probably haven’t heard, since you just got back: There’s another war brewing. They’re talking nukes, so if you’re getting out, now’s the time.”

 

I have to laugh at this. “They were saying the same thing last time I came back to Prime, and the time before.”

 

For my entire life and three generations before, Prime Standard timeline has suffered from a constant risk of war, but it also offers a comfortable existence if you’re part of the right social stratum in the right nation. But nukes or not, I’m not staying. I was born here, but I deserve better.

 

Walker says, “Maybe so, but I’m getting out. Haven’t decided where. Old Ginny found a branch back at Ben Franklin that’s run by fricken robots, if you can believe it, but friendly. She says she’s gonna settle when she finds a sub-branch with decent medical bots.”

 

Again, I have to laugh. “Robots…seriously?”

 

“I know. Makes my skin crawl. But more power to her. What about your utopias?”

 

“I’m working a good nexus at the early Roman Republic.”

 

“Not the Roman Empire?”

 

I scoff and say, “Those lines are all Nazis or nuclear winter, or worse, global theocracy. Earlier is better, back when the Romans were still idealistic. I found a sweet spot where the idealism lasts until our time.”

 

“But not sweet enough, obviously.”

 

I don’t answer this, but it’s true. This last one was so close, but not quite right. All I want is a safe place to call home. My demands aren’t unreasonable. I just want the basics: a stable government, or no government, and free will. A better life expectancy wouldn’t hurt, and they need to have cured cancer and degenerative diseases, and, of course, a liberal view on relationships. I lived in a quartet in this last one and that was definitely sweet. I miss my partners dearly, but the constant pressure to stay in fashion wore me down. That striped one-piece monstrosity with all the artfully placed rips was the last straw. Everybody’s wearing them today, one of my wives had said, but I’m sorry…I don’t want to go out to the mid-morning promenade with my, um, everything hanging out in the breeze.

 

Walker asks, “You gonna keep trying?”

 

“You know me,” I answer, and of course I’m going to keep trying, searching until I find my perfect place. That’s what line-jumpers do. Rumor has it there’s another nexus of stable utopias branching just before the Renaissance, so that’s waiting on my list if the Romans don’t pan out. Of course, rumors are just that: rumors. Line-jumpers have their intuitions, gut feelings, and tell their stories of near misses, but the ones who find their Elysium Fields don’t come back.

 

As I’m ruminating on hopes and impossibilities, Alder Verillion slams in the door, crackling with energy. I haven’t seen her for years, not since the early days of line-jumping when we were both getting our implants. She strides over and says breathlessly, “Have you heard the latest? No, of course you haven’t…she just announced it. Do you remember Fernanda? The gal who discovered the Aztec Imperio nexus? She just hit the motherlode. Aliens!”

 

Now, she has our full attention, and everyone else within earshot.

 

I ask, “When? Nothing too early, I hope.” Precivilization branches are notoriously lethal and far too risky for me. Sure, a handful of scientists are foolish enough to gird themselves with environmental suits and instrument-laden balloons, exploring branches from the dawn of life and before, but there’s no accounting for the minds of scientists.

 

She answers, “Branching before the pyramids. Everybody’s talking about ancient astronauts, but I have my doubts.”

 

Doubts indeed. The critical events at these branches are always impossible to tease out. It was probably a merchant palming off some lousy copper or a midwife who stopped two seconds too long to look at a butterfly, and then a hundred years later, aliens decided to stay.

 

I ask, “So what are they like?”

 

“I only have this secondhand, but they’re saying dragons. But not exactly. They have scales and claws and all that, but too many eyes and too many, um, leggy tentacle things.”

 

And now, I have to ask the important question. “Are they peaceful?”

 

“Yeah, not so much. Most of the lines don’t have any humans left at all, and the others, well, you can imagine. But everybody’s making a mad dash, searching for a decent branch where we don’t end up as livestock.”

 

Aliens! That’s a new twist. Maybe I could put my utopia-seeking on hold for a while. After all, I’m still young and there’s plenty of time to settle down after I’ve had some fun. Maybe there are benevolent timelines layered in there somewhere, lines where aliens crashed and were rescued by humans, and everyone lived happily ever after…all the way up to our time. Or even better, there must be lines with spacefaring humans! That would be a rare prize. Flying through the stars with aliens…that would be better than being stuck in a utopia, mired for the rest of my life in boring tranquility.

 

I ask, “Do you have coordinates?”

 

“Already on Fernanda’s line-log. Knock yourself out.”

 

I ping my implant, and sure enough, coordinates and pictures are there for the taking. The aliens are beyond belief. Now I’m really excited.