Crimes Against Time

Nathaniel speeds through the Ezznagg sector, standing on the bridge platform of his ship. “We are being hailed by the GTE,” Haticat says.

“Oh, no. What do those idiots want?” Nathaniel asks.

“Surrender and unlock your force field. This is Galactic Travel Enforcement,” the radio booms.

“I’ll sort this out. Stop the engine so they can catch up,” Nathaniel orders. The GTE covers half of the galaxy, enforcing speed limits that varied by region and direction. Nathaniel always thought it all terribly arbitrary. In minutes, a large craft with flashing red, blue, and yellow lights parks gently against the force field. Nathaniel transmits his code so they can enter. Soon, eight officers step on board. One crawls over to the bed side to check for hidden crewmembers. Another inspects the computer controls. It is very crowded. “Welcome to my ship. I’m sure you’ll find it comfortable.”

The head cop grunts while the explorers are disarmed. They take Nathaniel’s ray gun, knife, and brass knuckles. “I am going to need those back.”

“Do you know how fast you were going?” the head cop asks.

“Not exactly,” Nathaniel says.

“You were going overlight seven in an overlight five zone,” the cop says. Overlight numbers mean powers of two multiples of light speed. Overlight seven equals 128c. Overlight five equals 32c.

Nathaniel shrugs. “Oops.”

“I’ll have to issue you a ticket,” the cop says.

“I guess so,” Nathaniel responds.

The cop begins typing on his tablet while Nathaniel watches. Finally he prints out a small piece of heavy-duty paper with shiny ink. Nathaniel takes it and puts it in his pocket while rolling his eyes.

“Just a second, boss, take a look at this,” the cop at the computer says. They all look at the computer screen. “The recorded law is different.” All ships sold in the parts of the Galaxy covered by the GTE were required to record the traffic law so that pilots were without the excuse of not knowing.

“What do you mean different?” Nathaniel asks.

The head cop turns around. “You’re all being detained for interrogation by the Bureau of Temporal Justice!”

“The what?” Nathaniel asks.

Nathaniel’s ship is impounded and he and his crew are transferred to the BTJ, an organization they have never heard of before. It is finally explained to him that the GTE was only created as a way to catch time travelers who had meddled with history. Since the speed limits, regional boundaries, and directions were chosen based on the details of historical events, changing history changes the law without changing the records in time ships.

After fitting Nathaniel with a bracelet that cancels his electricity power and superspeed, a ship shaped like a spoked wagon wheel takes them to planet T-Omega, a dry planet of many stone arches. The land is a deep vibrant red. The BTJ Chose T-Omega in part because its axis also spins on an axis, which itself spins on an axis, and so on. Its complex movement makes it difficult to land in invasion fleet but also puts it in a no-paradox zone, meaning inmates cannot alter history there to free their past selves. “That’s not good. I programmed the ship to follow us before we left,” Nathaniel says.

Separated from his crew, Nathaniel is brought before a judge. Behind the bench is a giant clock-like device covered in strange symbols. “So, there’s a lot of charges against you.” He reads through a big book. “Rescuing Dopla from the Electrobot, stopping the shellfish invasion of Dahk, preventing the trees of Fkoojy from being eaten by worms, and failing to die on Iddhya when you were supposed to. They go on and on. How do you plead?”

It is starting to dawn on Nathaniel that he might be in much more trouble than a speeding ticket. “Oops?”

“Changing the path of history is a very serious crime. The smallest change can have ripple effects far into the future. Do you have any justification for your actions?” the judge asks.

“I was a hero, protecting the innocent, doing what I was hired to do. On Dopla and Dahk I had never even heard of time travel and didn’t know it was possible. How could I have been changing history when I was a part of history living through it?” Nathaniel asks.

“But you do know time travel is possible now?” the judge asks.

“Of course,” Nathaniel answers.

“So you can now be held culpable,” the judge says.

“For things I already did in the past?” Nathaniel asks.

“Past and future are irrelevant in crimes against time,” the judge says. “What about on Fkoojy and Iddhya?”

“Fkoojy was an accident because my navigation computer malfunctioned, and on Iddhya I was only trying to save my life. I have a right to defend myself. I’m not required to die just to preserve the timeline,” Nathaniel says.

“Wrong. Law 18 commands it,” the judge says.

“I’ve never even heard of time law or time cops. How was I to know that changing history was illegal?” Nathaniel asks.

“Because I just told you. You do know now, don’t you?” the judge asks.

Nathaniel thinks for a few seconds. “No.”

The judge hits a tiny gong. “Lying will not be tolerated. Do not break your oath.”

“What oath? I never took an oath,” Nathaniel objects.

The judge hits the gong again. “I’ll remind you that you took the oath of truthfulness next week.”

“What?” Nathaniel says. It goes on like this until Nathaniel is exhausted. Then they finally transfer him to his cell. Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are there, as is a Tersik, a Humanoid with dark brown skin and bright blue eyes.

“What time is it? What day is it?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know. It feels like forever. You know I’m not good with time,” Nathaniel says.

“That happens to us all. Time travel destroys your mind,” the Tersik says.

“And how long does that take?” Haticat asks.

“I have no idea. I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I just know I want to go home. I miss Tersik. I miss the trees with the white bark and red and green leaves. I miss the pastel houses and the screaming of the bats,” the Tersik answers.

“Tersik is gone,” calls a black blob from the cell across the hall. “It burned.”

“No, I stopped it before it ever started!” the Tersik yells.

“And I started it again,” the black blob counters.

“When I get out of this place, you’ll never be born,” the Tersik says. The blob snickers and returns to his bed. The Tersik turns to Nathaniel. “If you find your enemy’s parents and you pay them to never have kids, you haven’t killed anybody because your enemy never existed to kill, and no one even misses them. It’s a win-win. Why is that illegal? Who is the BTJ to decide the correct version of history? There should be temporal anarchy.”

“That makes sense,” Nathaniel agrees.

“There’s a war coming. Join the anarchists and help us destroy the BTJ. Then we can make sure they were never founded,” the Tersik suggests.

“I just might,” Nathaniel says.

Eventually, Nathaniel is returned to court to answer more charges. “On the planet with two names you negotiated a peace treaty between the Squid Trees and the Sulfur Amoebas, which through a long chain of events led to Ninosa being populated by blobs. How do you answer?”

“I fixed that problem already so it never happened. I made sure that I never landed on that planet,” Nathaniel answers.

The judge reads quickly through a printout on the side of his desk. “Yes, I see you did that, but why were you so sloppy? Why not fail at your negotiation attempts instead?”

“Why not? What difference does it make?” Nathaniel asks.

“To fulfill history as it was intended to run,” the judge answers.

“How am I supposed to know that there is a correct version of history?” Nathaniel asks.

“It’s obvious,” the judge says.

“Not to me,” Nathaniel says.

“Nonsense. The Wheel of Justice can tell you what is supposed to happen.” The judge gestures to the clock-like machine behind him. “Input the spacetime coordinates for the event,” he tells the court officer. The wheel is spun and finally lands on a strange symbol Nathaniel does not recognize. “There. You were supposed to fail in negotiations, starting a war, and the Squid Trees blame you, and you barely escape the planet alive.”

“How am I supposed to know what that symbol means?” Nathaniel asks.

“I just told you,” the judge says.

“This is so stupid; there is no correct version of history,” Nathaniel declares.

“And yet you fixed the timeline to the correct one on Livilia-7. Of course, you did it sloppily. You were supposed to stop the Dolls before you updated your body on Diosis, not after,” the judge says.

“So the one time I changed the past on purpose, I was actually following the law because it was always part of history that I change history?” Nathaniel asks.

“Of course. You can check the wheel,” the judge answers. “Now, about Graykar: You cut up an attacking force of Marthon. Seriously?” the judge asks incredulously.

“Wait, that’s in my future. That’s far in everybody’s future. That doesn’t affect us today,” Nathaniel points out.

“There is no such thing as your time period or my time period. There is no statute of limitations on time crime,” the judge says.

“But…” Nathaniel starts.

“Now let’s talk about Ionine,” the judge begins.

“What was supposed to happen on Ionine?” Nathaniel asks.

“Your crew developed a cure to the plague several years early, costing later would-be inventers a lot of money. You also interfered in an ongoing investigation by destroying evidence that someone had attempted to use a timestopper,” the judge says.

“Evidence? You mean the timestopper itself? If I hadn’t destroyed it, it would’ve destroyed itself,” Nathaniel says.

“You should have informed us so we could confiscate and deactivate it,” the judge says.

“When? There was no time to spare!” Nathaniel says.

“When? You just told us now. We have time travel. We could go and get it now if you hadn’t dropped it in a black hole.” They continue to talk in circles for hours until Nathaniel is sent back to his cell.

Soon it is lunchtime. Nathaniel sits in the cafeteria with his Gruezhlings and the Tersik named Jerek. All around them are beings of all kinds. A Styracosaur approaches them, flanked by two Psittacosaurs. “Hey, can we sit here? We’re friendly Dinosaurs – not!” They sit down anyways.

“H-hey, Deet. You don’t want to mess with these four. They were on Chijug,” Jerek says.

“Get lost, Jerek,” the Styracosaurus, Deet, says. Jerek takes his food and walks briskly to the other side of the lunchroom. Nathaniel continues to eat silently as the Dinosaurs stare at them. Finally Deet speaks. “Around here we have to help each other and it’s polite to offer new friends a bite of food.” Nathaniel simply stares back. “I could really go for a bite of Stuffian.”

Nathaniel smiles slightly. “Go for it.”

Deet looks at one of the Psittacosaurs, who gets up and grabs Doctor Bill. Nathaniel tosses the contents of his plate into Deet’s face with one hand while embedding a fork into the Psittacosaur’s face with his other hand, pounding it in with the plate still in his first hand. He then throws the plate at the second Psittacosaur, approaching from the other side. Suddenly, all seven of them at that table collapse onto the floor with extreme muscle cramps. They’ve been hit with some sort of energy weapon. Thirty guards surround them and take them away to their cells.

When Jerek returns, he tells what he knows about Deet. “He thinks he’s the prison king, but not everyone is with him yet. Ever since Burket’s kidneys finally failed, no one has been able to take his place.

“Who else has potential?” Nathaniel asks.

“Well, Blowhole the Dolphinoid can blow fire from his blowhole since he was on planet Zzx and inhaled the volcanic gases. The guards make him take pills to stop it, but he spits them out. People are kind of scared of him, although he has no instinct for collaboration.”

“Who else?” Nathaniel asks.

“Ernet the Vlymon was gaining supporters, but then got put in solitary after fighting with a guard,” Jerek says. “He used to take walks around the perimeter of the yard, always the same direction.”

Nathaniel mulls all this over until returning to court the next day. “The charges go on and on. You were once on Bingo and became infected with a germ that affects memory,” the judge says.

“And I suppose I was supposed to not find the cure and continue forgetting things – but then what if I forgot my history and changed something?” Nathaniel asks.

“No, you were supposed to find the cure, which you did. What you weren’t supposed to do is leave the time period, continuing to spread the pathogen to other times and to other time travelers so that no one today retains their earliest memories,” the judge says.

“What? No one? All over the galaxy?” Nathaniel asks.

“Everyone throughout history from the dawn of the universe into the infinite future gets infected sometime between their first and sixth birthdays, forgetting everything before that time before being infected by the cure,” the judge explains. “Every person so injured is considered a separate crime.”

“That’s a lot of crime,” Nathaniel says.

“That is the nature of time crime. The ripple effects compound, which brings me to the time you saved the lives of…” The judge reads from the book. “Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill while on the opposite end of the universe. These three beings which were supposed to have died instead go on living for decades, committing time crimes of their own, saving others which go onto commit other crimes against time, and so on, all of which you are responsible for.”

“That’s a lot of crime,” Nathaniel says again.

“Yes, it is,” the judge says. “An infinite amount, which is why all crimes against time carry an eternal sentence.”

“That’s not fair!” Nathaniel objects.

“What’s not fair is that everyone dies before their sentences are over. Your crimes are staggering in quantity and we haven’t even talked about the attack of the Mopheads on planet Chlorine yet,” the judge says.

“What do you mean, mopheads?” Nathaniel asks. “I’ve never even been to planet Chlorine.”

“Yes, one of the crimes you haven’t committed yet, but will,” the judge says.

“You can’t charge me for something I haven’t done, especially if I never do it because I’m stuck here on T-Omega for eternity!” Nathaniel yells.

“There’s no excuse for crimes against time. I’m ready to pass sentencing. Reset the wheel.” The wheel is reset, spun, and lands on the infinity symbol. Nathaniel knows what that means. He is taken away and Haticat is brought in for his trial.

Back in the cell, Nathaniel is hot. “Why don’t they have better air conditioning?”

“Oh, use this.” Jerek pulls out a canister and attaches it to the wall. Nathaniel adjusts the nozzle, releasing a stream of air. “It’s an air pump. They won’t let us have fans.”

“Why not?” Nathaniel asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe they think we will use the blades as weapons. They also won’t let us have magnets or motors of any kind.”

“Really?” Nathaniel muses.

Later, once Haticat has returned, Nathaniel walks the yard with his Gruezhlings. “They told me I shouldn’t have hidden the candy in my body during prohibition on Ninosa, but I didn’t know I had a choice! Then they told me I piloted the ship too well and was supposed to have crashed it six times on planets we passed by but never visited. We have missing adventures because I’m too good at not crashing,” Haticat complains.

“Did they charge you for things you haven’t even done yet?” Nathaniel asks.

“No,” Haticat answers.

“Did they charge you yet for things I did on the planets you did get me to safely?” Nathaniel asks.

“No,” Haticat answers. “How can they charge two people with the same crime?”

“Causality,” Nathaniel answers.

Just then, a guard steps out in front of the group. “That’s enough; walk the other way.”

“We were just taking a walk around the perimeter of the yard,” Nathaniel says.

“And now you can walk in the opposite direction,” the guard replies.

Nathaniel turns around and his Gruezhlings follow. Speaking softly, he says, “That confirms my hypothesis, and now I know how we’re getting out of here.”

For the next two months, Nathaniel and his crew carefully count the number of times they rotate. They pace in the cell, turn over in bed, and go about their daily activities such that their world-line torsion exactly cancels the strange rotation of the planet. The prison was shielded from communication signals and teleporter beams, but nothing can block something that isn’t there. A time machine arriving from centuries past or future isn’t there (until it is) and thus can’t be blocked. What stops time machines from simply materializing inside the prison and rescuing the prisoners? The problem was rotation. When a time machine materializes, what happens to the matter in the spot it lands? It normally becomes displaced to the moment that the time machine later dematerializes again, but only if the time machine has the power to move it. Displaced matter exerts a continuous force attempting to push the time machine back out of the nonexistence from where it came. It’s like a spring. The more times the displaced matter has historically rotated relative to the time machine, the greater its world-line torsion, and the greater the force. Any time machine attempting to land without matching its accumulated rotation to the location might find it cannot land there at all. T-Omega’s highly complex and nigh-unpredictable (over long time periods) rotation makes it impossible to land on for long. However, one millisecond is all it takes to snatch up an object that can be sifted out from its surroundings. This is why spinning motors are not allowed. Prisoners could use them to de-rotate objects so that time machines could smuggle contraband in and out of the prison – and if it can work on objects, this includes people. This is why fans aren’t allowed. This is why the guards don’t like it when someone repeatedly walks the same way around the yard. This was almost certainly what Ernet had been doing and the real reason he was removed. Nathaniel needs to come up with a plan B in case he is stopped. He is sure the guards are keeping track and know how close he is to zero net rotation. If the guards put him into a cell where he can’t see the sun, he will have no way of keeping track.

Nathaniel carries his tray of food to his seat, turning around corners while nonchalantly looking around as if he is trying to decide where to sit. His Gruezhlings turn as well, matching his number of rotations over the long term without copying him exactly so it looks as natural as possible. Two guards then walk up to the table. “You four come with us.”

Something in his tone makes Nathaniel think this is his last chance. He stands up slowly, looks at Haticat, and throws his tray at Blowhole the Dolphinoid. “It was Deet!” Doctor Bill yells when he turns around. The entire room stands up and starts to fight, faction against faction. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill run in four different directions. The guards are trapped in the middle. More guards pour into the room, knocking down those on the perimeter of the crowd with their muscle cramp guns, while the four friends roll around on the floor, racking up as many rotations as they need.

There is a brief flicker of darkness and they find themselves on the bridge platform of their ship, traveling through time. Nathaniel lets out a breath slowly, stands up, and types in new coordinates. His power-canceling bracelet is gone, having rotated it many times in the same direction relative to his wrist.

Haticat crawls over onto the bed side. “Hey, what’s this doing here?” The Wheel of Justice sits on the bed.

“At some point, it must’ve rotated the correct number of times and been picked up,” Nathaniel says.

“Are we going to keep it?” Fred asks.

“No, it probably has a tracker. We’ll dump it in a nebula,” Nathaniel answers.

“So, where to next?” Haticat asks.

“So many places,” Nathaniel says. “From what I’ve heard, we still have so many more crimes to commit.”

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