A Pivot In Time (Alien Artifact Book 2) by Douglas E. Richards

Author:Douglas E. Richards [Richards, Douglas E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-08-14T22:00:00+00:00

PART 6

“Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, all led to an untimely grave. And almost every reign was closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.”

― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

34

Rome, 779 AUC (Ab Urbe Condita)

Kelly awoke, feeling cool air against her face, and shackles on her wrists. How had being bound in some way become commonplace? She had gone from being a pacifist geek scientist to an integral part of an elite team of operatives almost overnight.

She opened her eyes just a hair to see her husband on the ground and bound beside her. He was either still unconscious, or faking it, as she now was, but he looked to be in good health.

They had made it. This trip had been worse than ever, as they had only regained consciousness in her grandfather’s crypt for a second before they had their minds wrenched through higher dimensions and crippled yet again. But they were alive.

It took her a few additional minutes to fully recover, as disjointed pieces of memory continued to return.

“Trek,” she thought at the alien AI, and then remembered that it wouldn’t be given this name for thousands of years to come. “Alien AI,” she amended, “my name is Kelly. Your future self sent us here from 2027.”

There was no reply.

“Alien AI,” she repeated, “please respond.”

When no response was forthcoming, she screamed the same thought with all of her mental might, but once again it made no reply. Trek had assured her that it would talk to her in the past. Which could only mean one thing. While they were unconscious, the cube had been removed from their proximity. A horrible start to the mission. With the cube they were all powerful. Without it, potentially helpless.

“Justin, are you awake?” she thought at her husband. Her electronic implants knew to feed her thoughts to Sage, who would then feed them to him. The telepathy system would keep all thoughts private that were not specifically directed at a person or AI.

Sage let her know that Boyd was trying to broadcast a response, but couldn’t yet formulate a coherent statement. She waited for his mind to recover from the devastating scrambling brought on by time travel before trying to communicate further.

“Kelly?” he replied at long last, and if thoughts could sound groggy, his thoughts did now. “What’s going on?”

“We just traveled to the distant past. Give yourself some time to re-acclimate.”

She waited as patiently as she could, aware that the journey must have been much harder on him than it had been on her.

“Okay, I think I’ve recovered,” he informed her minutes later. “We made it! Our wrists are shackled, as always, but at least we’re alive.”

“And now for the bad news. There’s no sign of Trek.”

“You didn’t think the universe was going to make this easy on us, did you?” he thought, his wry tone somehow coming through, even telepathically.

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