Borrowed Time- the Force Majeure Read online

  BORROWED TIME - THE FORCE MAJEURE

  Book 2 of the Temporal

  Protection Corps Series

  E.W. BARNES

  Borrowed Time - The Force Majeure © 2019 by E.W. Barnes All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover design by Tony Lazio

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: 2019

  Now & Later Publishing

  www.A1000Years.com

  ISBN 978-1-7331492-3-5

  For CW, LW, KL and TL and always for CB and AB

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PROLOGUE

  The end of the world began with an email received by almost everyone on the planet. The source of the email was untraceable, thwarting the efforts of the world’s best hackers, black hat and white. But they all knew who it was from.

  It contained a simple message, only five words:

  “The debt is now due.”

  Those five words were like echoes of rock falling in the mountains. Even as the sound faded, the vibrations continued, traveling through earth and air, a slight movement gently touching a cornice of snow angled over a 1000-foot drop.

  The gentle touch shifted the snow slightly, just enough for gravity to become paramount. The cornice dropped, gathering snow with it as it fell and the avalanche was born, roaring with destruction, wreaking devastation on everything and everyone in its path.

  The night worker found the message when he arrived home exhausted from his shift. He could not sleep. The debt would destroy him. If he survived, he would live out his life homeless, a refugee.

  The student struggling to make ends meet stared at the message for over an hour. If she could not face the debt owed, they would accept other forms of payment - if she could live with herself.

  The couple making breakfast for their children exchanged wide-eyed glances over their meals. The children laughed and teased each other, not realizing they faced indentured servitude for the debt.

  The CEO called her attorney immediately upon receiving the message. Surely there was a loophole. Her attorney did not answer his private line. When she finally reached his assistant hours later, she learned the attorney had taken his own life, the message blinking on the computer screen next to him.

  The president called a meeting of her global advisers. Four hours later she telephoned the heads of the major departments of the world government. Six hours later she declared martial law.

  There was a rush at banks, supermarkets, and home improvement stores. Fights broke out over pallets of stored water, crushed loaves of bread, and bruised vegetables damaged in the chaos. Someone shot a man for the last tank of propane outside an abandoned gas station where people used axes to demolish the building for its wood. No one saw anything.

  The preppers were gleeful. This is what they had been waiting for, having no faith in a system that housed, clothed, and fed everyone but couldn’t protect against the threat of the email.

  Some dug in, fortifying their homes against hordes real and imagined. Others bugged-out to remote locations where they had stored everything needed to live in isolation in perpetuity.

  Schools closed when parents refused to send their children. After store shelves emptied, managers sent their employees home with stockpiled boxes they had hidden from the public: bread, milk, and water. It was a smart tactic to keep employees working and not panic as they watched the necessities of life disappear in front of them.

  When people eventually did panic, rioting against the government and the demand of the email, community security patrols, police and, finally, the military enforced order.

  But like when a rock falls in the mountains, it was already too late.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The headstones sent late-afternoon shadows across the grass. The air chilled as the sun reached the horizon and the darkness under the trees became pockets of blackness next to the pale gray of the granite markers.

  Sharon Gorse wove among the graves, not finding the one she was looking for. She was deep in the cemetery, far from streetlamps or the glow of lights from homes. Once the sun set, she would not be able to see where she stepped, let alone read the gravestones.

  “Did you find it yet?” a voice asked.

  Sharon jumped.

  “Don’t sneak up on me!” she hissed. “I don’t understand why we need to do this in the dark. Couldn’t we have come at noon when it was warmer and, you know, daytime?”

  “Coming here at night means there is less chance someone will see us,” Caelen Winters answered patiently.

  Sharon already knew that, of course. Caelen had come to realize crankiness meant she was nervous. Most of the time it was endearing.

  “If you are not comfortable doing this tonight, we can come back another night,” he offered.

  “No, I don’t want to put this off. I want to get this done.”

  It had been an intense three months since Sharon joined the Temporal Protection Corps. From the start she’d been driven to complete her training as soon as possible. In truth, she was moving twice as fast as the average agent-in-training, and when Caelen pointed this out, she explained she had twice as much to learn.

  “I have 200 years of history to catch up on, on top of everything else,” she would say.

  But she suspected Caelen understood it was more than a simple drive to get up to speed. While no one had said anything directly to her, Sharon sensed there were some in the TPC who didn’t approve of her appointment as an agent. Whoever they were and whatever they believed, she was going to prove them wrong.

  “Here, this one.” Sharon pointed to a grave marker under a magnolia tree. It read Mary Walsh - Beloved wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother - 1912 - 2001.

  “Ok,” Caelen said. “What’s first?”

  Sharon pulled out a dull black plastic device from a pocket. The size of her palm, it had small controls and a screen above a larger button in the middle. She tapped the device, focusing on the screen and reading aloud what she learned from it.

  “I found her. Mary Walsh. Born Mary Arnold in Chicago, Illinois. When her parents divorced in 1932, she moved to Long Island, New York where she met and married Matthew Walsh. They moved to Los Angeles in the late-1930s where he worked for the city and she raised their eight children.”

  “Good. Now, what’s next?”

  Sharon tapped the device again. The screen flashed, illuminating her face with changing colors. The sun had set. Sharon and Caelen were now in darkness. Anyone visiting the cemetery would have seen her glowing fa
ce appearing to float above the gravestones; and perhaps would have made a hasty retreat from her eerie visage.

  “Sorry, there is a lot here,” she said as the seconds passed. Then:

  “Found it. A dinner in 1951.”

  “What made you choose that day?”

  “She wrote in her diary that she and her husband had a fight over dinner, then made up. 40 weeks later their twins were born. It sounded romantic."

  “Romantic.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Caelen blinked to hide his rolling eyes.

  “She lived from 1912 to 2001. You could've chosen the day of the stock market crash, or the attack on Pearl Harbor, or V-E Day, V-J Day… the moon landing! And you chose a… a domestic disagreement over dinner in 1951?”

  “That’s right, I did. You were the one who said that sometimes everyday events had more heart than historical milestones.”

  “When did I say that?”

  “In my apartment in 2022,” she said. “Anyway, it was something close to that. I paraphrased a bit.”

  Caelen hid his smile, knowing when to give up. “You’re right, I would say something like that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets to warm them. “Ok, what's the next step?”

  Sharon tapped more buttons.

  “They were having dinner at a restaurant on Olvera Street in Los Angeles on June 14, 1951 at approximately 5:30 p.m. There was a small alley near the restaurant. We can shift into the alley and then go to the restaurant and observe them over dinner.”

  “Have you requested the appropriate attire?” Caelen asked.

  “Already done and waiting for us,” she said as she held up the device as evidence.

  “Then take us back,” he nodded. She pushed the center button, and they disappeared in a ripple, like ghosts in the night.

  ◆◆◆

  They emerged in a Temporal Protection Corps training room in the year 2204. The temporal amplifier, the device that allowed them to travel in time, was contained in a workstation made of a shiny white material that was like a mix of glass and plastic. Not knowing its official name, Sharon privately called it glasstic. All TPC training rooms had glasstic counter tops and workstations which made for a bright if sterile environment.

  Agent Jonas Fernley walked in with the TPC version of suit bags.

  “Welcome back. I understand you’re heading to the 20th century this afternoon,” he said as he handed them each an opaque ecru bag which looked positively brown next to the glasstic.

  “Yes,” Sharon answered. “June 14, 1951. Los Angeles, California.”

  “Anything we need to know about the date or the time frame?” Caelen asked. Jonas was the Temporal Protection Corps’ expert on the 20th century and had memorized almost every day in the 100-year span.

  “Let’s see. June 14, 1951 in California, the United States…. The U.S. was fighting the Korean War that year. The Nevada nuclear test site saw a lot of activity … Joe DiMaggio retired, Robin Williams and Sally Ride were born… The first commercial computer, the UNIVAC, began operation that day,” he answered, his eyes on the ceiling as he ran through the year in his memory.

  “Other than the ongoing cold war with the Soviet Union and blooming McCarthyism, it was an altogether ordinary year,” he ended.

  “Did my grandmother used to do that?” Sharon asked. Her grandmother, Rose Sprucewood, was the Temporal Protection Corps expert on the 20th century before she left the TPC to marry Sharon’s grandfather, Kevin Bower.

  “Not to the same degree,” Caelen answered as Jonas opened his mouth. Jonas revered his former mentor Agent Sprucewood, and Caelen wanted to forestall another breathless recitation of her many contributions to the TPC and chrono-history.

  “I’m going to change,” Sharon said. Jonas glowered at Caelen for interrupting him, which turned into beaming at Sharon as she left the room. Caelen followed, wondering if Jonas was starting to revere Rose Sprucewood’s granddaughter, too.

  As an agent-in-training, Sharon's rigorous education was overseen by Agent Caelen Winters, along with Agent Jonas Fernley and Agent Miranda Noon, the TPC legal and ethics expert.

  Training with Caelen was awkward for Sharon at first: Before she joined the TPC, Caelen and Sharon had traveled through time to stop the mysterious conspiracy known as the Chestnut Covin from changing history and eliminating Sharon, her family, and the Temporal Protection Corps. Sharon and Caelen grew close during their adventure, but Caelen no longer remembered it because the events took place in a different timeline. It was sometimes difficult for Sharon to have memories that Caelen did not.

  It didn’t take long for them to change into the period-specific clothes Jonas provided. Sharon had a short-sleeved plaid dress with a rounded collar and buttons to the waist, along with a small red belt, and matching leather pumps and handbag. Caelen’s attire included a brown suit with a boxy jacket, a white dress shirt and a red tie the same color as Sharon’s belt. He was putting on shiny brown shoes when she knocked on the wall of his cubicle.

  “Ready?”

  “You changed fast. You must be in a hurry,” Caelen chuckled.

  “If I successfully complete my training, then I get to go somewhere more exotic, like ancient Egypt or Elizabethan England, right?”

  “That’s true in theory,” he answered. “There’s more training needed for those journeys, you know. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

  She muttered something that sounded like “spoil sport” and he pretended not to hear.

  Sharon pulled her hair back into a short ponytail. Caelen refused to shave his beard, arguing that while it might stand out a little in 1951, not shaving wouldn't impact their ability to blend in.

  “Weren’t there Bohemian poets in the 50s who had beards?” he asked Jonas, his eyes twinkling. Jonas sputtered about not having the right outfit for that role. Sharon shook her head as she programmed the temporal amplifier for their shift to 1951.

  She carefully input the time and place, and then picked up the small plastic device she had used in the graveyard. Its official name was the Temporal Amplifier Portable Interface Unit, but Sharon called it the “remote control.” Putting it in her handbag, she looked at Caelen who nodded his readiness.

  “Good luck!” Jonas said, his diatribe ended for the moment.

  Sharon activated the device and the room shimmered like a mirage. The white glasstic surfaces blended together, tinted a pale red, which created a soothing effect. Maybe that’s why they use so much glasstic, Sharon thought as the room disappeared.

  ◆◆◆

  They appeared in a cobbled alleyway next to an adobe wall that was painted a bright white.

  Sharon did a slow turn, taking in the details of their location. No one had noticed their arrival. A train rumbled nearby, but closer were the sounds of cheerful music. A door opened behind them, and someone set a chair outside, followed by a young boy with a large wooden bowl full of ears of corn. He stopped when he spied them.

  “Necessitan ayuda? Do you need help?” he asked.

  Sharon shook her head. “No, gracias,” she answered, looping her arm under Caelen’s so he could lead the way out of the alley. The boy nodded as he sat on the chair with the bowl in front of him and began shucking the corn.

  The music got louder as they left the alley. Open only to pedestrian traffic, Olvera Street was a marketplace in the oldest part of what was originally called El Pueblo de Los Angeles when settled by the Spanish in the 1700s. Colorful paper flowers and garlands were draped over railings and hung from wires stretched across the narrow, cobbled way. Shops and vendors lined the street, selling Mexican souvenirs and imports. A delicate black lace mantilla distracted Sharon until Caelen asked her where they were to go next.

  “Oh, right,” she said as she reluctantly let the lace drape through her fingers as she stepped away. “The restaurant is at the end of the street.”

  Mouthwatering smells drew them. They stopped to read the sign above the door: Los Suenos. />
  “The Dreams,” Sharon translated for Caelen in a low voice.

  “Seating for two?” asked a man holding canary yellow menus. Caelen nodded, and they followed the man into the restaurant. After the brightness of the early summer evening, the interior was dark and a little intimidating, but as their eyes adjusted, they saw clean wooden tables with small candles making the room intimate and cozy. The host pulled out a chair for Sharon, but with an apologetic smile she selected the opposite chair. She needed to sit with her back to the wall to watch the room.

  “Cocktails?” The man asked as he handed them their menus. Sharon opened her mouth but Caelen answered before she could say anything. “No, thank you.” The man smiled and left them to their menus.

  Sharon leaned forward and pulled the remote control device from her handbag, hiding it behind her menu.

  “They should arrive in five minutes.”

  While pretending to read the menu, Caelen surreptitiously scanned the room to catch sight of their quarry. Their waiter arrived sooner.

  “May I take your orders?”

  Caelen hadn’t read his menu, but Sharon was ready.

  “I’ll have an order of taquitos with avocado sauce,” she said, handing her menu to the waiter. The remote control had disappeared from the table.

  “Uh, the same,” Caelen said. Sharon watched the waiter deliver the small paper with their orders to the kitchen before dropping the menus at the front podium for the next patrons who had just walked in.

  “They’re here,” Sharon breathed. Caelen waited a few moments and then turned to glance at the couple being seated to his right.

  “They don’t seem like they are fighting,” Caelen said. “None of their body language suggests tension. In fact, I would say they're relaxed and happy to be here.”

  “Her diary for today talked about a fight. Maybe the argument started over dinner,” Sharon shrugged. She pulled out the remote control she’d hidden in her handbag. “That’s all I have,” she said after reviewing the screen.