(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 44

"Why are you not wearing clothes?"
It was a sensible question, even if the answer was frustratingly stupid. Of course it had been some dumb joke. Of course the time machine didn't require the traveler to be naked. Of course the master was just being a jackass about helping. It wasn't that any of that was surprising, none of it was unexpected. What was unexpected was that the time machine actually seemed to be set to what was promissed.
The arrival platform was basically the same as the departure one under the big estate. It was a big, circular device surrounding a stage-like central platform that worked much like the time machines  back home. Except that, if the master had been truthful, this was roughly eight centuries in the past, something no time machine back home could even attempt in a single jump. Even if one of them had, the arrival would have been a lot more... messy.
Unlike the one at the estate, however, this one was not a lonely circle in some dank cave. A vast hall stretched out in every direction, hosting machine after machine on large squares that had a few design features in common with ziggurats, essentially pyramids with the top lobbed off. The size of the structures and the rings on top of them was the only reason that much could even be deduced, because the distances involved were daunting! Here and there, a distant boom announced someone either departing or arriving, but seeing the people inside the circular machines was impossible. A speck of dark in the distance, like seeing a fly land on a car parked outside a window, was the most that was ever possible, and even that was a rare treat.
"Why are you naked?" asked the voice again. Although it was a soft, relaxed, gentle voice, it seemed to come from a person at the very edge of the large square, just outside the circular time machine. The gender was impossible to discern, the person wearing what looked to be a kind of medical hazmat suit, a formfitting one-piece in a faded shade of orange, with a face mask not unlike an elaborate welding visor.
"I was told to be naked to travel."
"You do not need to be naked to travel," the voice said, quite casually. It sounded vaguely male, but not enough to place any bets on it.
"Yeah, thanks, I know that now."
Whatever had compelled the person to ask about the nudity, it ended abruptly. So abruptly, in fact, that there was no time to put on the jumpsuit that still lay folded on the floor of the machine, within arm's reach. Instead, the floor simply dropped in the middle, pulling everything, and everyone, on it along for the brief ride!
The ride ended at a very small platform, at least by comparison. It had the feel of a futuristic phone booth, round like a tube and shiny like polished steel. On second thought, it had the feel more of a giant tin can. Except it was open enough for people to walk by and stare at the young woman kneeling naked inside.
While putting on the jumpsuit, though, it seemed like nobody really took notice. The people walking by were a mixed bag, but oddly enough, none of them seemed entirely exotic. Fashions seemed simple, most just wearing something light, thin, and quite honestly a bit bland. Single colors, basic designs, very little of it even hinting at the time and place they might be from. And all of them eerily calm, not one of them in a rush or seeming annoyed, stressed or even unhappy. Stories of mindless clones and unfeeling robots came to mind.
The place also had a blandness to it, floor after floor visible beyond the railing of what seemed like a large balcony, showing more balconies, nearly identical, both above and below. Everything was very evenly lit and open. It felt weird.
"Enjoying the view?"
The voice was familiar, but it took a moment to spin around and locate it in the surrounding crowd.
"Tarik?"
It was his clothes that made him hard to quickly identify. They looked like a test run for the disco era, plain pants and shirt with a thin, black belt across the waist. The fabric, though, was a light grey that seemed to reflect the light in a very unusual way, almost like low, silky fur. At first glance, not very disco, but then again, disco was never that easy to define.
"Tarik, what the hell are you doing h... Wait, how the hell did you get here?? I just arrived, and you were just..."
He held up both hands a little defensively, the barrage of questions being perhaps a bit much to throw at him right away.
"Easy, easy. I left just like you, only a few hours before, during the night. I arrived here about an hour ago." His last few words were drawn out, sa if he was very unsure of them. He did sigh a moment later. "Of course, time is ironically hard to keep track of here."
At first, the explanation made sense. But only at first.
"Wait, if they sent you here before I went, then you've already returned! You finished your trip before I was sent back, so I'm changing your timeline. I'm essentially messing with your past. That's... that's bad. Right?"
There was something comforting at seeing his casual smile, something that seemed to say that everything was alright. But at the same time, it made him seem horrifically casual about the whole topic of crossing timelines. That was far less comforting!
"They have really clever systems in place," he said, finishing the sentence as if it explained everything. It quickly became clear to him that it didn't, though.
"They track my movements, so they know if anything deviates from my original experience. Then, they erase or replace any offending memories, so no matter what, I return the same as the first trip around."
"So you'll end up not knowing what happened between the two of us?"
His casual smile turned to a grin, like a poker player about to win on a complete bluff.
"I go back after you're done here, and they restore my memories. But at that point, everything between us here is over, and I only end up with my final memories. It's a very basic way they avoid cross contamination."
The crowd kept moving by as if nothing special was taking place. It seemed insane and completely logical, all at the same time. This was a hub for time travel. Nothing that was said was likely to be anything new to these people.
"So why did they send you here, anyway?"
"As a guide," he stated calmly. It took a moment to take the whole thing in, but he seemed to be serious.
"You're going to guide me? In this place?"
He nodded, the smile now just a calm stretch of his lips.
"Well... Where do we go?"

Huge windows, like pieces carved out of reality itself, ran across the entire wall. The ceiling was so far above the floor that it seemed like the place was built for giants, or simply to impress anyone standing there. Some distance back, the open space split into four floors, bridges slender and bland crossing various gaps in the floor of each level, apparently for no other reason than to break up the view. But here, all four floors were united into one large room, and the windows reached from the very top to the very bottom of it.
"We're in a mountain side," said Tarik, indeed sounding like a run of the mill tour guide, even more than he had back at the estate. "Well, technically on a mountain side. The whole thing is built to look like part of the mountain at a distance. Only those close enough to really examine it would notice, and nobody comes up a mountain like this to look closely at it. Not in this day and age."
The windows were not just holes covered in glass. Sets of shutters or something like it ran horizontally across, making them seem like the windows of a war time bunker. It was easy to imagine that from the outside, the slits that were open to look through would be as good as invisible.
"What's that?"
Through the slits, which were still large enough up close to getf a good view of the surrounding landscape, signs of life could be seen not far below. Brown shapes, likely buildings, had little dots moving between them, most likely people.
"That's a village," Tarik answered, sounding none to impressed. "They're with us, put there to make sure nobody else starts up a settlement and gets in the way. Locals, almost all of them. Rescues that would have been lost from history in shipwrecks and the like."
"Right. So, where are we? Denmark doesn't have mountains like this. Denmark doesn't have mountains, period."
"Norway, 927. Somewhere between Kristiansund and where Trondheim will be founded in a few decades from now."
Looking at the village below meant looking through a slit at a certain angle. Stepping back, it became possible to look through other slits, at other angles. The view of the Norwegean coastline hit like a slap in the face, the stunning vista looking almost fabricated through the large window.
"And what's with the whole layout of this place, by the way?"
It was immediately obvious that he had no idea what that meant.
"I mean, it just looks like endlessly repeating balconies over balconies over balconies. Is that somehow futuristic?"
Tarik let out a small laugh. "Not futuristic, no. Humans just seem to come predesigned with an affinity for repeating rows like that. The ancient Greek forums, the Roman Coloseum..."
"... American shopping malls..."
It was clear that Tarik had to think about that one for a moment. It was, in retrospect, a silly or even arrogant remark, thinking that he would have any real knowledge of something as banal as a shopping mall. In a life of time travel, it was doubtful that late 20th century malls were big on the list of stuff he would remember, if he had ever even visited one. If he had even visited the 20th century!
"Why?" he asked. "Is there anything particularly wrong with... shopping malls?"
"Not at all. It just seems a little underwhelming. I mean, big time travel organization like this, seems like things would look more... well, more."
He nodded, apparently getting the point, or at least pretending to.
"We can go to a different area. They'll get in contact with us when you are ready to jump again."
"Ready to jump? I'm not ready to jump? I thought they were just a bit booked. What's wrong with me if I can't jump?"
Again, he laughed. It was becoming a bit annoying.
"You just need to cool down and aclimatize on a molecular level, is all. They'll check in, they tend to know how long it takes."
Tarik seemed to know exactly where to go, taking long and hasty strides across the open, light and shiny floor. It took a few seconds to get truly away from the huge windows and back to the multilevel structure, and once there, something seemed a little off. Something about the people walking around. They all seemed a bit aimless, but that could simply be from not knowing what their aim was. People in the street of any city or town seemed aimless at first sight. But there was something more than that.
"I think... I think I just saw someone."
Tarik stopped in his track, turning around with a puzzled look on his face.
"Someone?"
"Yeah, someone. Sorry it's a bit unspecific, but it was a face in the crowd. Someone I thought I recognized."
His annoying laugh and smirky grin were gone, replaced with a pensive and slightly worried frown.
"A time traveler?" he asked, clearly trying not to make a big deal out of it.
"I don't know. Don't think so, to be honest..."
People went by at a breathtaking pace on the other levels. Not breathtaking because of speed, but because of how many seemed to be there. The crowding seemed oddly exaggerated, as if more were pouring in just to show how many would fit.
"There!"
Tarik followed the extended arm and finger at its end, trying to trace it to someone on the balcony below. He seemed to fail.
"There, the guy with the very short hair and brown suit!"
Again, Tarik tried to follow the pointed finger to the target, but seemed to fail.
The bannisters between levels in the place were not really bannisters. They were sloped side, raised to between chest and waist level of any normal height person. The fact that the slope extended far was enough encouragement to make use of it! Nobody got in the way of grabbing the top of the sloped side and leaping up on it, and people reacted mainly with surprised outbursts at seeing someone actually slide down it to the next floor. Halfway down, the fact that the plan might not have been thought through that well became apparent, of course, but at that point, there was no way back!
The slope ended a bit more above the heads of people on the next floor than expected. A few startled voices rang out as it became clear to people that this journey would only end by landing amongst them, at a somewhat daunting velocity! They cleared the way in good time, luckily. And for some reason, landing on the floor felt no worse than a rough time travel arrival! The flat floor that looked so much like polished stone felt like thick carpet to land on. It hurt, sure, but with a proper roll, it was manageable. Getting up was a bit weirder, since everybody was now silently staring. Had there been time, it seemed like the whole event warranted a deep bow to the audience.
But there was no time. The man in the brown suit was nowhere to be seen, the lack of standing above him now becoming a bit of a problem! People did jump aside, at least at first, perhaps fearing someone else would drop on their heads from above if they got in the way! But eventually, it became a needle in a haystack.
"Marie!" shouted a voice in the crowd. The hope that the man had himself realized the situation was dashed when a very out of breath Tarik pushed his way through the crowd.
"You couldn't just use a lift like a normal person, could you?" he panted, trying to fight back against his strained lungs and straighten his back. When it finally succeeded, more or less, he pointed to a small, flat circle embedded in the slope above. People were stepping into it and quickly hovering up or down to their destinations.
"He's here, Tarik! I can't see him anymore, but he's here!"
"Who?!" the poor man asked, frustrated and with a slightly uncomfortable look on his face as he held his hands pressed against his sides.
"He's... Oh, #*@!, I know his name, wait a second..."
Tarik said nothing, but under less stressful circumstances, the look on him would have been priceless, every fold and muscle in his face screaming "did I run myself into a stupor for this?!" He never said anything about it, though.
"Brown suit, right? Short hair, brown suit?"
"Yes, did you spot him?"
"No," he said,  still breathing a bit heavy, although he stood erect now, "you said that, right before you #*@!ing launched yourself of the balcony like some waterslide."
His mention of waterslides distracted, but only for a moment. Shopping malls were perhaps easy for a time traveler not to ever encounter, but knowing about waterslides and not malls just seemed weird. But there was no time for such banalities.
Tarik immediately began scanning the crowd, standing on his toes. He was a tall man, and that came in handy now, but he still seemed to struggle a bit.
"He's some guy from the future. I think his name was Tanner or Tenner or something..."
"Who does he work with?"
"Work with?"
"Who is in charge of his, you know, time travel."
"He's not a time traveler."
Tarik abruptly forgot about looking and turned with a confused glare.
"Not a.... How is he here, then?"
"Well, that's the freaking question, isn't it?!"
The reply was a bit harsh. Tarik was right, it all seemed a bit far fetched. But the guy in the robot scorpion had a very particular face, and it was hard to think that it could be anyone else. Even under these unusual circumstances, to put it mildly!
For a brief moment, the crowd became less dense. Any crowd did, if you looked at it long enough. People moved around, and how close they remained to one another was always in a state of flux. This was nothing special. But in that brief moment, it became possible to see many times more of them walk around, in a single look!
"There!"
Tarik flinched for a second, but then looked. Then he followed.
The guy was walking very calmly, clearly not thinking about anyone identifying him, and was esay to catch up to. He never even reacted to being grabbed by the arm, even when everybody right around him seemed to stop and stare for a moment before walking on.
"Tenner, is that..."
The world seemed to suddenly shift, as if the entire floor dropped just a little bit, giving that sucking feeling i the pit of the stomach.
"That's not.... what the hell is going on here?"
"What's happening?" asked Tarik as he got through the crowd. He ran fast, but he took up enough space that it mattered in a crowd.
"No, this isn't possible. This has to be some kind of...."
The words trailed off. The sucking feeling was getting worse.
"Marie, talk to me," pleaded Tarik, to the point of kneeling a bit to not loom so tall.
"This is... This is not him. It's not Tenner."
Looking almost a bit disappointed, perhaps more by the overly dramatic reaction than the fact that it was the wrong guy, Tarik stood back up and looked over the man in brown now standing in front of him.
"So we'll just keep looking. He's gotta be here somewhere."
The sucking feeling was so strong, it hurt.
"No, this... This isn't Tenner."
"I got th..."
"His name is Maltheus."
Squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his increasingly weary head, Tarik began to rub his face.
"What?" he finally asked.
"This is Maltheus."
"I got... I got that. Who is Maltheus?"
The man in brown stood almost perfectly still, turning his head only a little back and forth to follow the conversation. He said nothing. But his face was impossible to mistake.
"He's... he's not a time traveler, either. He works for one, but he's not..."
The man, Maltheus, just stood there, looking, his eyes growing more confused by the second.
"I met him in... twice, actually. Once during The Decline, once after Heavenfall. He... he's just some guy that connects people."
"Not a time traveler?" Tarik asked, trying to fully confirm it.
"No. Not a time traveler."
"Do I... know you two?" asked the man in brown. He seemed even more confused than Tarik about the situation.
"Yes! You helped me track down The Wheel Yard, remember?! You gave me some anti-stressor gum and I went a little nuts. Don't you remember that?"
He just shook his head, looking increasingly panicked.
"You gotta be, what, in your thirties now? We met twice, but the older you.... Oh, shit!"
Without asking, Tarik grabbed both shoulders, and his stare was more intense than ever.
"Marie, what the hell is going on? Who is this Maltheus, what is The Wheel Yard and all that other stuff, and who is this Tenner guy?"
It all seemed to be spinning. The floor, the crowd, Tarik. It felt like panels were coming off of walls that weren't supposed to exist.
"It's... I... I need to sit down..."
The words alone triggered some reaction from the place, making a large chair rise from the floor as the shiny, stone-like material deformed itself to meet the requirement. At first, it seemed weird, but it made sense. The place was molding to fit the needs of anyone there. That was likely how the floor had been so safe to land on after dropping from the balcony above.
"Just take it slow. Breathe, Marie. Breathe slowly and tell me who these people are."
From the beginning, Tarik had been pleasant to talk to. But now, he seemed almost soothing, making the tension slowly dissipate. Sadly, it became clear too late that Maltheus, or whoever that person was, had also dissipated.
"I was following up on some information about large machinery through the ages, clearly something tied to time travel."
"Time machines?" Tarik interrupted.
"No, they're something else completely. I think they block time travel, or alter it, or something. Anyway, I started near the year 4000 and worked my way back. I missed a destinaiton by a century, almost exactly, and I met that Tenner guy there, piloting a big robot scorpion."
Tarik said nothing. The floor had molded a chair for him, too, and he simply sat there, patiently looking, listening. It felt... therapeutic.
"He helped me out with some problems and some robots he worked with helped me find another of the big machines."
"Wait, robots?" Tarik finally asked.
"Yeah. I was surprised, too. I mean, we knew there was a period after The Machine War when humans and robots worked together on hunting down rogues on both sides and cement the peace, but The Embassy never had anyone check out that era."
"The Embassy? The ones you work with, right?"
"Yeah, we mainly help people that get caught up in all this #*@!ing war stuff across time. But... Anyway, on a later trip, I was trying to track down a rogue time traveler to ask her some questions, and she had something called The Wheel Yard in the 2060s, and I met Maltheus when he was just a kid in the ruins, trying to find work or something."
"A kid in the ruins? But he..."
"Yeah, I know, he was clearly older here. I ran into him in The Wheel Yard on the next trip, decades later, when he was older. This version of him here is clearly aged somewhere in between."
"And that was after the... that..."
"Heavenfall, yes. It's something that happens around 2100 or something, I don't know if you ever went to that era."
Tarik shook his head, leaning back in the chair and causing the chair, in turn, to mold into a softer recline, fitting his limbs and back perfectly.
"It's just... Well, during The Decline when things went to shit, some powerful people tried to escape the planet in this whole big array of fancy space habitats. Thing is, something went wrong and they started crashing to Earth, and people called them Heavenfalls. And then someone got the great idea of just calling the whole event The Heavenfall, or just Heavenfall. But yeah, it kinda #*@!ed the planet up an extra time,  y'know. But anyway..."
People were keeping their distance. Somehow, the place had sensed that the conversation with Tarik was a bit private, and thin pillars had risen to form a kind of periferi, keeping the crowd back. It seemed a bit luxurious, perhaps even frivolous, to suddenly have a little private spot in the midst of the masses.
"So, they're not time travelers?"
Tarik waited, but a shake of the head was answer enough.
"So, not time travelers, but they show up here. Or seem to. I mean, that last guy..."
"Yeah. He didn't seem to know what I was talking about. That was..."
The conversation sort of died out, neither one saying anything but both scanning the crowd, perhaps a bit aimlessly. Nobody out there seemed even remotely affected by the pillars, although it seemed they had to get in someone's way at some point or another. The whole place had a zen-like busy calm to it.
"And what's with the brown clothes? Everybody else is wearing bright colors, but they just wore... wait..."
It wasn't a familiar face in the crowd. But it was a brown outfit. Tarik looked in the same direction and barely even noticed he was suddenly sitting there alone!
The crowd stepped aside with some agility, not one of them getting in the way this time. Thanks to that sudden practicality, it took no time to catch up to the person in brown.
"No..."
The crowd kept moving, unaffected. But the moment he turned around, it felt like reality shattered with a loud crack.
"No... No, not you. That's impossible..."
The man looked almostcompletely unaffected, a mildly annoyed frown being the only sign that he even acknowledged anything that was happening. After a brief look, he simply stepped back into the crowd and seemed to disappear. Even the brown clothes faded from sight, as if he had been nothing but a mirage.
"For heaven's sake, Marie," panted Tarik as he finally caught up, "what happened now?!"
Everything felt out of whack. Gravity itself seemed to become fickle and playful, making it impossible to even stand up. And when the floor below turned soft as a pillow to dampen the impact of the knees, it was little comfort at all.
"Tarik..."
"Yes?"
"Get me out of here."

The next stop was a bit rougher than the first. Three millenia, they said. Three thousand years into the past. They had asked for a destination, how far into the past the trip was meant to be. The answer "as far as possible" had quite clearly not pleased them, but they had acted on it. Three millenia. About ten trips worth of what The Embassy might have been able to offer.
The original plan had been complicated. A series of Embassy facilities, then an array of allies and assorted factions that had time travel available for some price. The time travel economy was complicated, with payments made in any and all ages and currency rarely fit for bringing along. Paying for the use of a time machine could require payment in the originating era, the destination era, or through intermediaries in any other era imaginable. It was not quite the smooth system of trade, but that did make it oddly flexible. Sometimes.
Jumping these three millenia was free. Nobody had ever mentioned a price, and it was becoming increasingly odd. Still, that bit of oddity completely drowned in the flood of other questions that were now surfacing.
"Who was that last guy?" asked Tarik. Apparently, their time machines were big enough to house multiple travelers, and he had joined in on the jump back to the early second millenium BC destination. Asking for the exact year created some confusion, mostly seeming to be about why someone would ask that. But the estimate was the year minus 2038.
"A friend. I think."
The place was very different from the first hub. It was smaller, with only a handful of time machines visible on arrival. They had the same overall ziggurat shape, but they seemed less neat, the design less clean and simple. Things protruded from them, sections were missing. They looked incomplete, but they apparently worked fine.
"That's not much of an answer," he growled. It seemed somehting about the trip was getting to him, too.
"Look, I don't know, okay? I don't know how this is happening or why they don't seem to know who... Forget it."
The air was remarkably fresh. From the arrival platforms, walkways had radiated out in multiple directions, but Tarik seemed to have some kind of internal map going,perhaps from having been there before, or even from some kind of design philosophy that allowed him and others from the Wenway Group to instinctively know how to navigate a new hub. After all, he had seemed very familiar with the previous one, as well.
"What was his name? We'll start with that," he sighed. It almost seemed as if he was asking because he didn't  know what else to say, but feared the silent alternative.
"Aldric. His name was Aldric." It almost hurt to say it out loud. "He's from the future, from my future. And your's, I guess."
It was hard keeping a form focus on the surroundings with memories of Aldric suddenly flooding back. There were quite a lot, he had been with The Embassy for a long time.
"His name was Aldric and he is supposed to be in the future, doing neurosimulation analysis."
"Neuro what?" Tarik asked almost immediately, sounding strangely annoyed by the words.
"Big machines scan a brain and track signals through it. If you know how to read it, and how to trigger the right signals, you can basically read everything in a person's mind. It's a kind of interrogation."
Not surprisingly, the description of that particular scientific field made Tarik look very uncomfortable, almost disgusted, even. He seemed to have problems processing the idea completely, looking vacantly into the air ahead for a few, long periods of time, breaking away only to make a deeply pensive sound now and then.
"Do you know how to do that?" he finally asked. This reaction was a little more surprising.
"Nooo! It's a huge and complicated field, with tons of science and machinery from the future. I barely even understand what the guy says most of the time."
The long walkway, little more than a suspiciously narrow bridge inside a transparent tube, was about to end. Outside were trees, some of them looking very unfamiliar, and the occassional animal slipping through the flora. Some of the animals looked a bit odd, too.
"I just... I can't shake the thought of what they would be doing here? I mean, it seems like they are not them, like, the ones I know. They just look the exact same. I don't know what the hell is going on, here. You ever get that feeling?"
Tarik nodded, rather frantically. "Funny enough, right now," he mumbled out loud.
The plants outside continued looking more and more odd. The air had a slightly different hue, less blue and more bright and yellow, as if the sun was a little more intense. Whether there was some powerful air conditioning going on inside the transparent tube or the coloring was just some trick of the light was impossible to say, but something seemed a little off.
"Where are we going, anyhow?"
"Nowhere special," Tarik replied. That prompted a full stop, which somehow seemed to surprise him. Noticing after a few more steps, he stopped, too.
"What?"
He seemed honestly confused.
"I need to get farther back, Tarik. This isn't enough. I need to get back to around 10,000BC."
"Why?" he asked, looking like a baffled child, eyes distracted by thoughts and body getting a bit restless.
"I need... I have something to do there. Something I need to check."
There were a few seconds of silence, while some group of lizards decided to crawl along the tube on the outside.
"Look," he finally said, sounding a bit tired bythe whole thing, "I get that you have your secret mission stuff, but the more you can fill me in, the better I can help."
"With what?"
His eyes lost focus again as his brain starting hunting for useful answers. He came up with nothing.
"Okay, the traffickers will..."
"The what?"
"Traffickers. The ones running this place," he explained, sounding a little frustrated. "They will contact us when everything is ready. I thought you might need some distractions, and I kinda know the place." He waited for an answer. All he got was a skeptical glare. "Do you want to go have a look, or would you rather just sit and wait?"
There was very little to sit and wait by. There were the platforms and the tube bridges.
"Right, shall we, then?"
He clearly knew his way around the place, not hesitating at intersections and quickly navigating the more confusing hubs. It took no time before the tubes opened up into what looked like a city frozen in the middle of an explosion. Parts and pathways went in every direction, including up and down at gravity-defying angles. In places, the architecture looked outright irresponsible, thin rope-like structures holding entire islands of construction afloat, the structures on them not caring much which way was up or down, looking more like they grew on the rope structures like coral reefs than anything built by human hands. Or any hands. Or machines.
With an annoyingly unimpressed swagger, Tarik simply walked up one of the nearest ropes. As he did, his gravity seemed to shift, until he walked at an angle that should, according to physics and logic, make him tumble backwards like a ball on a hill.
"Where are we going?"
He let out a laugh that sounded quiet, but considering the odd, intense sounds of what could best be described as an electronic ocean permeating the air, he had to be speaking very loud and clear.
"There's a place to eat. Physical food is a bit of a luxury here, but I know the entity in charge."
"Entity?"
"Uhm, I guess you would call it an artificial intelligence, but the line is kinda blurry around these parts."
As he turned, now walking what should be almost straight upwards, his feet seemed to cause the string-thin structure beneath them to unfold like a flower, forming a complicated walkway of tiny moving parts. It was daunting to follow in those footsteps, especially since the flowery parts folded back in after each step he took. They did unfold again as needed, luckily!
"We met during a dig near the future location of the English Channel. She was working in analysis, doing high level computations on some soil management, I think."
"So many #*@!ing questions..."
He laughed at the remark, this time very loudly and clearly, almost as if to make sure he was heard.
"Hit me," he simply said, actually stepping beyond the edg of the flowery unfolding pathway, in order to cut to another branch. All he had to do to not step on what was essentially air until the path decided to change that was walk a few steps farther, but he seemed confident in cutting across. He seemed surprised that he was the only one. Taking the safer path took only a few seconds extra.
"Well, first, the English Channel was formed long ago, so how..."
"Last time it opened. Doggerland, about 7000BC."
"Right, and the AI is a she?"
"It chose the pronoun. I'm not questioning something with the computational power of a few million people."
"And third, how the hell did an artificial intelligence go from 7000BC to, what, 2000BC? Machines don't do time travel."
"Information does," he said, now with a bit less bravado and more weight to his voice. "She instructed the group on how to reconstruct her here. Don't know what happened to the original, and I have no idea about the philosophical implications of an intelligence reconstructed across time. I just know she makes incredible stuffed breads."
Practically the moment he finished the sentence, he opened the door into what looked like a slightly angular donut. The inside had people, and things, sitting along the outer wall, all the way round, adding more angles to the defying of gravity. Comfortable, reclining seats and armrest tables formed for two, and even before either sat down, a pale blue beam made foods form on the tables.
"What?" he asked casually. "Sit. Eat."
Eating or drinking anything in the place seemed not just reckless, but outright stupid. But then again, the smell was incredible. Both the food and the drink tasted amazing, the former being the aforementioned bread stuffed with some kind of juicy yet crunchy filling, with some meats and assorted others added. The drink tasted like fresh spring water, but creamy with just a hint of hazelnut.
"Told you," Tarik added, smiling victoriously. It was hard to disagree.
"So how far back and forth have you been in your line of work with the group, Tarik?"
He was munching with delight on his own food, chewing as he thought it over. Before answering, he very visibly considered simply taking another bite instead.
"Three trips into the ice age, but nothing after 1850," he managed to answer before chowing down again.
The food somehow managed to be not just tasty, but also filling, and yet never outstayed its welcome. The porions were clearly sized for the customer, his being the larger one, but whoever had made it knew exactly how much to make. The plate disappeared in another pale blue beam, empty, but there was no feeling of hunger left behind, and no sense of bloating or overeating. The perfect meal. With no way to tell time, ironically, it was impossible to say how long the meal had taken, but it was still daylight outside when the door to the weirdly designed diner closed. The air felt even fresher than before.
"So, Marie," said Tarik, sighing with the delight of a man that had enjoyed his meal just as much, "you ready to... Marie, what?"
"You gotta be #*@!ing kidding me..."
In the soft daylight, it was hard to make out anyone with total clarity at a distance. The strange architecture seemed to warp the light that made its way in. But on another unfolding flowery path, at a completely different impossible angle, was a person in completely brown clothes.
"What? Another one?" asked Tarik, quickly spotting the brown clothes.
"Yeah. Klaus."
Tarik said nothing, but his eyes felt like a burning question mark against the skin.
"He's from 1701. Well, I recruited him from some other time, dying from a disease. Or something. I couldn't remember, he just... told me so."
Feeling Tarik's hand calmingly on the shoulder was highly unexpected, but he ignored the brief flinch.
"Let it go, Marie. This is something messing with your head, somehow. It's not safe." His voice was surprisingly calming, too. "Also, they should be ready to get us to the next hub at any time, now."
The brown clothes with the Klaus lookalike in them were quickly becoming a brown dot in the distance.
"No. No, this time, I have the initiative. This time, surprise is on my side."
The path unfolded below, tiny petals of the metallic flowers creating a place to put another foot.
"How do I run on this?"
Rather than telling, Tarik made a slightly effeminate move with his toes as he stepped quickly forward. Looking at his feet, however, meant looking down, or the version of down that anyone on that path had. The angle meant that down was more sideways, the solid ground truly beneath the path becoming a near vertical mass far to the side. It seemed safer to just walk, at a brisk pace.
Klaus, or whoever it was, luckily had things to do. The brown dot became a brown shape again as he stood still, never noticing anyone approach, his entire attention fixated on rearranging some floating bits of color, looking like tiny building blocks for children. He seemed to be doing so in accordance with something written on a small screen-like item floating by his other hand.
"What is he doing?"
"Adjusting something. Not sure what," Tarik said, shrugging. "What did you say he did for you, again?"
Watching the Klaus lookalike do unexplained things, and listening to Tarik asking about the actual Klaus, something felt oddly off. Pieces of a weird puzzle seemed to be coming together, slowly, but the picture they formed was a bit unnerving.
"He designs vehicles, and maintains them."
Tarik let out a calm "oh," nothing more than confirmation that he heard it. But it only took a few seconds for the lie to blossom.
"That explains that, I guess," he said, pointing up, or what was up for the Klaus lookalike. A million tiny pieces were assembling into some form of machine, looking deceptively like a futuristic jet or even spaceship.
"I think I'm ready to go, Tarik."
"We can... Wait, what?" he asked, the sudden break from observing the Klaus lookalike understandably taking him by surprise.
"Yeah, I've seen what I need. I'm ready to go back a few more millenia."
It was obvious to anyone that Tarik was trying to figure out some mistake, pick out some misunderstanding about what was being said. He hesitated, but slowly regained his speech.
"Right, I think all we need to do is say it. They should be bringing us to the time machine in just a moment."
He spoke slowly, still not quite understanding the abrupt change of mind. He wasn't meant to.
"Just one thing, Tarik..."
"Yes?"
"Where we go next, is there a beach? I would like a beach."
"Uhm, yeah, there's a very nice beach."
Of course there was a #*@!ing beach.

The beach was  actually very impressive. Azure waters along a glittering sand coast, low vegetation near the water and taller, seemingly tropical vegetation farther in. There was a disturbing absence of animals, though, suggesting that whoever was in charge had walled off or otherwise protected the place. Because judging from some of the plants, this was not a soft and gentle place. Some of the thorns looked like naturally grown weapons.
"Everything okay?" asked Tarik, standing a few paces away, just looking, clearly trying to hide some confusion.
"Yeah, everything is fine."
Ironically, everything actually was fine. Pieces were falling into place, and although the picture that the puzzle painted was a bit disturbing, seeing it clearer felt like getting the upper hand on, well, everyone.
"You don't want to go somewhere?" he asked, almost sounding like a restless child afraid to be a bother.
"No, just here is nice. We'll just wait until they're ready to send us on. This is the last hub, right?"
He nodded, slowly and looking almost disappointed.
"Yes, last one. Once you're ready, they can get you to anywhere in the vicinity of 9000BC."
The sun was low in the sky now, coloring the horizon more and more red, tinting the waters slightly purple.
"Are you coming along?"
"Yes," he instantly replied, suddenly seeming to wake up a bit. "They'll send me with you, just to make sure everything goes right. Not a time we usually operate in."
"Too close to the ice age?"
Tarik nodded. It made some sense. If they had a lot of their operations centered on the northern parts of Europe, 9000BC meant those areas were still pretty much covered in ice. And moving to other places had little point, since there was very little treasure to hunt for this far back. Stoneage people did not have many ships loaded with gold, after all. Why they even had hubs that went back to before the Egyptian faraohs was a bit odd, but not a topic to discuss at this point.
"They're ready," he said, after a moment of peaceful silence.

Arriving in the ancient forests of what would one day be the Schleswig region at the border of Denmark and Germany made the memory of the huge ziggurat platforms seem like a blissful dream! The jumpsuit took the worst punishment, but the overall impact was more than enough to get all the air knocked out, and leave a very painful back and thighs, the parts that had taken the brunt of the final collision. Somewhere nearby, Tarik hit the ground with an angry howl.
After taking a few seconds to get oriented, it was fairly easy to spot him in the tall growth. The greens and browns of the woodland area clashed quite visibly with his black leather patchwork armor and the light grey cloth he wore underneath it. He had skipped armor in the hubs, not surprisingly feeling safe in what was basically the man's workplace. But now, he was out of his comfort zone, and the light armor outfit from back at the estate was somehow available. Or they had copied it. They obviously had the technology for that.
"Not used to rough landings, are you?"
He was still sitting on the ground, almost laid out flat on his back. A mix of discomfort and outright pain kept flashing across his face as he got up, tiny move by tiny move.
"So this is how you typically operate?" he asked, clearly being rhetorical. He seemed inattentive. He didn't notice the very large branch, for one.
"Hey, Tarik?"
He stopped his cumbersome attempt at getting to his feet, looking up from his awkward kneeling position.
"Tarik, what did you and the men back at the state talk about?"
Inelegantly getting his left foot finally underneath himself, the first step in pushing off the ground to stand, he gave a slightly baffled stare.
"The men you talked with. While I ate. What did you talk about?"
"Not much, really. Mostly hunting."
"Who were they?"
His eyes were getting frantic, just a little. A panic was setting in.
"Just some friends."
"Friends? What kind fo friends? How did you know them?"
His eyes were getting worse. Panic was setting in.
"Locals. I knew them from..."
He never finished, instead springing to his feet very awkwardly, his footing still too poor. All it took to make him stumble and fall was a hard shove. With a yelp, he tumbled into shrubs and dead branches covering the forest floor.
"How much of you did they copy? How much of Tarik is in there?"
He said nothing, scraping against the dirt to push himself away, but constantly managing to only hurl around loose soil.
"How much? Did they get a full copy from the real Tarik in 1652, or did you just scan my brain like you did to get the looks of all those lookalikes you used to #*@!ed with me?"
"I don't... they got a copy! They got a copy!" he yelled, his facial features starting to become erratic. As the large branch came swinging down on him, he screamed. It smashed into the ground between his head and the right shoulder with a thick, crunchy sound.
"Trick question, mother#*@!er! It was 1668!"
A few garbled sounds came from him, from his throat more than his lips. He was short circuiting, for lack of a better term.
"How much did you get from me? How much did you find out with your #*@!ing questions?"
He was starting to lose focus, his gaze slipping and his limbs either going limp or freezing up. He wasn't built for this. Just some organic copy to tag along, using every opportunity to ask questions. A subtle interrogator.
"How did you know?"
It took some strength to pull the large branch back, but as it went away, he seemed to relax, his panic shutdown subsiding a bit.
"You #*@!ing idiots built everything around what I said. Did you really think I wouldn't notice that?"
"I don't think they do it to time travelers that often," he said. His voice was suddenly softer, letting him gasp for air while talking.
"Then why now? Why me?"
He shook his head, letting out a strained chuckle.
"Do you actually think they'd tell me? I'm a #*@!ing copy of someone you barely knew."
"So you know? You know you're not the real Tarik?"
"Of course I do," he laughed, a dry, sickly laugh, while he looked at his filthy hands, all dug into the soft soil. "My objectives don't match anything in my memory. Also," he added, the laugh becoming a little crazy, "the information I do have on you is something that tool would never even understand, much less know to ask about."
He winced with minor aches as he tried to get up from the ground again. Although he seemed more out of breath than before, likely from struggling around down there, he did seem to be recovering from the trip.
"What do you know about me?"
"Something you don't," he said, sliding his leg up under him and starting to lean forward.
"Stay down."
"Or what?" he asked, his laugh this time sounding tired and somewhat mocking. Making a foolish mistake, he locked eyes right before lunging forward.
This time, the branch didn't miss his head.