Here's a short story based on the following prompt, sent to me by my friend. No idea where it came from, but if you wrote it, thanks!
You've just inherited your grandfather's bookshop in Central London. You spent your childhood exploring its shelves and are passionate about keeping the legacy going. The night after the shop's grand re-opening, you receive a strange package containing a leather-bound book with an odd gemstone at the center. Etched in gold ink is an inscription from your grandfather, telling you this book is your legacy and that you must protect it with your life. After flipping through it, you realize in awe that the book can foretell the future. You are reading history that has yet to be written when a group of men break into your store, hunting for the book. They threaten to burn your shop down with you in it unless you hand it over. You decide to run for it, book clasped to your chest. Out the front door, down the back alley, up a fire escape. Everything inside you is telling you to protect the book at all costs. As you turn a corner, the book slips from your hand and lands on the tar-covered rooftop. You look at the open book and see an illustration of yourself on a rooftop looking down at an open book. It is the present moment. You flip to the next page to find another illustration of yourself falling into a swirling black portal as if a tornado opened up below your feet. You suddenly feel a gust of wind.
Justin gasps as lights pierce the swirling black portal. Seconds earlier he could only feel the cold black nothingness of the vortex, but now dim lights above him brighten into the warm glow of aisle lights increasingly illuminating the maze-like stacks of his grandfather’s Central London bookshop. The familiar and friendly jumble rushing into view, Justin’s terror fades with the inky vortex. His heart rate slowly returns to normal against the worn leather cover of the strange book he’d received from his grandfather’s estate earlier that evening. The book’s inscription promised it would be his legacy and demanded he protect it at all costs. It was not going well.
Most of Justin’s body finally relaxes, color flooding back into his knuckles as he releases the book and pushes it away. It slides just a foot across the floor, but even had it been across the room, the clear gemstone embedded in its center would still imprison Justin’s attention. His mind refuses to calm down and races to grapple with what just happened: receiving the book in the post, the gemstone glowing a pale blue when he touched it, the pages full of pictures of what his next moments would hold, someone pounding on the shop door twice, the door being kicked open, three strangers in black coats, button-down shirts & upscale slacks, fedoras, and steampunk-style glasses & gloves, entering & threatening to burn the shop down, his mad dash through the exit as they searched for him. Out the front door. Down the back alley. Up the fire escape.
Who the hell were those blokes? What the shit was this book?
Onto the rooftop as the storm broke. One of the men grabbing his shoulder. The gemstone glowing red as he recovered the book from the rooftop where he’d dropped it. A struggle to free himself and maintain his footing on the slippery rooftop. The growing vortex over the ledge below him, illuminated by lighting. Falling.
Am I dreamin’? Dead? No…this all’s way too real. How could this thing know what’s going to happen? And the door’s not broken… Did I just…did I just time travel?! How? Did grandad know all this? It’s his book so he must’ve, yeah?
Before his frantic mind can think of another insane question, the same fist pounds twice on the locked front door of the shop. The banging jumpstarts his heart once again, sending Justin scrambling across the floor. He grabs the book and dashes into the stacks as the door is kicked open all over again.
Peering over the top of a bookshelf full of Butler, Wells, & Verne, Justin watches as three men enter the store. Or at least, he thought it was three men the first time. Watching “them” move now, with the book’s gemstone glowing green, Justin sees it’s one tall, muscular woman, rapidly shifting back and forth between each of “their” positions, faster than the unaided eye could see. There’s a ticking noise, like the hands of a clock, each time the woman switches positions that Justin wasn’t able to hear when he experienced this the last time.
“Relllinnnnquishthe Chronoloooooogue orshop burrrrrrnz.” Her words click into a semblance of a sentence, but the book’s yellow energy imperfectly adjusts his perception of time to match her speed.
The woman examines the front area of the shop, flitting from one corner to the other. Tick. Tick. Tick. Her black trenchcoat whips around the room and for a second, Justin wonders how her fedora stays on at such speeds. He shakes the question out of his mind and looks down at his grandfather’s book. The gem begins glowing yellow as Justin flips through the pages and sees the woman’s break-in and search, just as he read future events before. He goes farther, seeing himself run out the front door again. Turning the page, Justin sees himself turn onto the street rather than into the alley this time. Skimming the pages, there’s no black vortex, no pursuer, and eventually only blank pages. He peers through the stacks in time to see the intruder flit over to the historical fiction section. Tick.
Careful not to make a sound, Justin sneaks to the front while the woman searches the stacks. Tick tick tick. He barely needs to open the door to slide his slim frame out of the shop, but his hoodie catches on a broken piece of the door jamb. Justin struggles to free himself while the woman makes her way back toward him through the stacks, still unaware of his presence. Gritting his teeth and bracing himself, Justin rips his hoodie from the door as quietly as he can. He gets his coat free with only minor snag, but pulls a chunk of wood out of the frame in the process. He watches the wood fall in slow motion, horrified by the alert it’s about to send the intruder. Before it can clatter to the floor, Justin realizes he actually is watching it fall in slow motion! Justin plucks the stick out of the air and gingerly places it on the ground. He sighs in relief as the gemstone’s green glow subsides.
Though his stiff shoes were not made for running, Justin ignores the pain on the sides of his feet and breaks into a mad dash down the old stone road. He follows the gentle curve down the hill just as swiftly as he follows what he sees in the book. No black vortex. No pursuer. Justin completes the turn as it starts raining. Just then, the dark night air is obliterated by the headlights of an oncoming truck. As its horn blares a futile warning, Justin freezes; his wet hair flops into his face and obscures his vision of everything but the light of his impending demise. A moment before the truck hits him, the gemstone glows red and he’s enveloped by the black vortex once again.
The truck’s headlights dim, becoming the bookshop aisle lights. Under his hair, Jake’s terrified expression relaxes. He slowly opens one eye, then the other, and then cautiously slicks his hair back. He remembers to breathe and lets out a sigh of relief, steadying himself on the nearby display table featuring the newest children’s book from America, Big City Ben. Justin drops his grandfather’s heavy book on the table, knocking over some of the kids' books.
The smell of old books helps center him in his favorite place in the world. Growing up, Justin spent all his free time in this shop: every day after school and every weekend he’d nestle into one of the shop’s reading nooks that overlooked the back alley and pour over as many adventures as he could get his hands on. As much as he loved these portals to other worlds, times, and lives, he loved their endings best. He couldn’t wait to see what happened to his guides and friends. Fictional lives weren’t the only ones lived in this shop, though: he remembered being extremely nervous about asking his crush out over in the horror section. His first kiss happened in biographies. When he was offered a job at the bookshop, Justin practically skipped to the travel section to literally jump for joy. He’d very nearly lost his virginity in poetry (if only his grandmother hadn’t stopped by to do late-night inventory!). This was the only place he’d ever worked and he’d always dreamed of stewarding this magical place for the rest of his life. Justin dreamed of sharing that passion with his wife and children, who are, for the moment, as fictional as the characters who’d befriended him all those years ago. Now, it seems the shop can only temporarily protect him from certain doom and may still be dragging him to that unavoidable fate. He realizes he has to escape his favorite place in the world.
Justin’s mind reels, trying to piece together what’s happening.
Ok. Book tells the future, but only up to the point where I…die. Must not’ve remembered the right path to take; not turned down the right alley or something: that’s why no vortex in round two’s pages. Means I can change what it says history is. When I do–inevitably??--die, the gem turns red and creates this timewarp...wormhole...thing that brings me right back to the first time I touched it. I must’ve activated it! Right, good. Good! Different colors got different effects: red is reset, yellow is reading the future, and green…that sped me up, didn’t it? Let me see that bird for what she really was… Now wait. Did it slow down time to do that, or speed me up to match how she was movin’? He shakes his head.
No, Justin. Don’t matter. Gotta go.
He scans the next few pages of the book and charges the front door, his footsteps matching the two slams of the woman’s fist. Justin narrowly spins out of the way as she kicks the door open, giving him the momentum and position to swing the book directly into the woman’s head, knocking her to the floor. He stops momentarily to get a better look at who’s been hunting him. She has shoulder-length, dark hair that’s braided from the top of her head running back toward her neck, the angles of which give the impression of a permanently furrowed brow. Her dark steampunk-style glasses have bronze accents, most notably tick marks on dials around each lens like two clock faces. Justin notes wires running to each of her gloves, but his attention snaps back to the broken glasses. Through the impact crack her eye, illuminated by light from within the glasses, starts glowing red.
Realizing the light looks like the book’s–which has now turned green–Justin leaps out of the way as her body’s enveloped by the black vortex. At the same moment as her body disappears, she seems to snap into position just outside the door with a “tick.”
Justin turns a page in the book and scans it, allowing him to see her next move and evade her reach. Tick.
He steps back as rain begins falling.
Tick. She approaches, jolting forward. Tick. She snaps back to her previous position. Tick. She appears to his left.
As he dodges, Justin notes that her glasses are now unblemished. He moves to the right so she snaps back and forth to and from several positions over there, all reaching & failing to catch him, but just barely. Tick tick tick tick tick tick. Flipping pages, he weaves back toward the left, seeing where she’ll be and narrowly avoiding her. She flits toward him, bouncing from one side to the other. Tick tick tick tick. The race between her inhumanly swift movements and Justin’s scramble to see where she’ll land next continues down the empty street. She is unbothered by the chase; he wonders how much longer he can process the book’s images to think faster than her feet.
“TheChrrrrronnnnologue,” she snarls.
“What do you want??” Justin shouts, eyes darting from the next page in the book to her and back again, barely keeping ahead of her movements. The book’s gemstone switches back and forth between yellow and green, allowing him to read the future and augmenting his speed & ability to process what she’s saying in turn. Tick. He swats away her gloved hand and slips in a puddle, nearly going down. Tick.
“ATemporrrrral Prosssssspector,” whirs from her mouth as she reaches forward and snaps. An imperceptible fraction of a second later, she leaps to Justin’s right and snaps in the exact same space again, then does the same to his left. TicTiTick. She ties together the same space from three different potential timelines at once with the glowing technology in her gloves, sending bluish-green energy crackling from all three of “their” outstretched gloved hands that creates an explosive fireball in Justin’s face, throwing him backwards to the ground. Tick.
She leaps on Justin and pins him as he coughs up rain that’s gotten into his nose. The ticking continues steadily with each of her movements, as she needs no excessive effort to deflect his feeble defensive moves as long as he can’t reference the Chronologue. Justin swings again, but while he could swear he connects with her jaw, she flits off of him with a tick, appears to his left with another, and ends up back on top of him without appearing to have been hit with yet another. One more tick leaves her standing over his head. She grabs his soggy hair and drags him into the alley around the back of the bookshop. He struggles to get free, but the ground is soaked and he has no traction. The ticking accompanying her footsteps feels like a countdown.
“Who are you??” Justin shouts, struggling to free himself and wishing the book would take him back to a day ago when he decided to put off getting a haircut. Justin waits for the book to take him anywhere, but it doesn’t activate.
Least I’m not about to die. Yet.
With her free hand, the woman adjusts the dial surrounding her left goggle lens. “Noone willlll---”
Justin’s panicked cry for help cuts into her sentence, but she continues undisturbed. “---heeeeearyou.”
Tick. She lifts Justin to his feet with one arm. Tick. She strikes his chest with her other palm, sending him flying into the stone wall behind him. He crumples to the wet, filthy ground, but manages to cling to the book. Tick. She adjusts the dial on her goggles again, bringing her into alignment with the speed Justin is moving through time. The ticking accompanying her movements stops.
“Give me the Chronologue.” Her words are still sharp and measured, like the measured ticking of a clock, but the two of them are now conversing in the same flow of time.
“That...what this is?” Every word is agony; his chest hasn’t felt like this since he broke four ribs in a ski accident.
“It is not meant for man.”
“Grandad says different.”
“Your grandfather took from a Prospector. Built a life on stolen time. Spent his life fleeing.”
“Ran a whole bookstore on the run, did he?”
“He concealed the Chronologue. Deactivated, he concealed himself. Only activated from time to time.”
“His monthly trips to Edinburgh, I’d wager. Always did come home with bloody brilliant plans. Never failed.” He coughs. “Kept his place goin’ even with the world against us.”
“Detoured to profitable timelines. Just as you did. This is not meant for man.”
“Got a reason why, or you just some…time…fascist?”
“Man may not determine time’s flow.”
“Well. I can see you’re doin’ a bang-up job. This timeline? Not it.”
“Time is the ultimate nonrenewable resource. We understand how to mine it. Process it. Therefore it is ours.”
Justin cracks the book open to protect its pages from the rain, glances at the next page, and lets out a pained sigh. “Listen. Don’t even want the thing no more. Take it.”
The Prospector studies him. She looks at the Chronologue. “Your Grandfather believed it was legacy. Actions indicate you believe as well.”
“Oh, I thought it was, but I’m not ‘im. I can’t fight everyone–including you lot–everyday. And knowin’ time itself’s against me? No thanks. Grandad fought his whole life; I don’t want that. It’s just…too much.” He holds the book out. “Take it. I’ll go back to me shop and we’ll forget all this. Pretend it was another timeline.”
The Prospector considers, then reaches for the Chronologue with a tick. Just as she takes hold, Jake throws his whole weight onto the book, dragging her downward and smashing it onto the stone street, breaking the gemstone. Jake manages to rip the glasses off the Prospector and rolls away before she can speed up again.
“You fool!” she shouts, as multicolored energy surges from the book, enveloping her arm and sending shocks through her nervous system. The energy wave prevents her from letting go of the Chronologue.
Justin pulls the glasses on and turns the lens dial as he scrambles backwards. A blue activation light circles the lenses and fades just as quickly, replaced by green light around the lens rims as they speed Justin up, just as the Chronologue’s energy crescendos. The book explodes, but the shockwave doesn’t hit Justin: the glasses flit him in and out of potential parallel timelines where the book was not destroyed, allowing him to avoid the effects of the blast altogether. Ticktitictickicktickictickticticktick. As temporal energy waves wash over the Prospector, rapidly aging and de-aging portions of her body and moving her through multiple timelines at random, the rain around her stops in midair. Her body evaporates in a second blast of color. The remaining energy crackles between the raindrops, turning them into hundreds of tiny water fireworks that begin falling to the ground again, though not all at the same speed. The air ripples with heat then settles as time begins moving normally again.
Justin breathes a sigh of relief and notices his ribs don’t hurt anymore. Lifting his shirt and feeling his torso, he finds no bruise. He thinks for a moment. Glassesspedmeup… He turns the lens dial down and the green light fades. Healed me. As the storm passes, Justin gets up and takes the glasses off. Could this really be over?
Said she was “a” Temporal Prospector…gotta be more of ‘em comin’ for these. Do I run? Where’m I gonna go? Can’t read the future now but these glasses could level things. Whether goin’ or stayin’, what kinda life is this? What kinda family could I have?
He slicks his wet hair back out of his face, walks out of the alley, and looks through the window of his grandfather’s bookshop. He knew he’d be a sitting duck if he stayed…yet he couldn’t walk away. He’d just fought time and fate to escape his favorite place on the planet…but in this moment he knew if there was any place he wanted to take his chances–to go down fighting if that’s what it came to–it was here. His bookshop.
He puts the glasses on and turns the lens dial, activating the green light and shifting himself into a faster gear. Not-so-distantly, he hears ticking. Somewhere nearby, Temporal Prospectors mine the timeline for their own purposes, whatever those are. Some of them could be coming for him right this second; any second. The ticking builds on itself until there’s a cacophony, like a swarm of cicadas. Justin doesn’t know how many there are or if they’re aware of their fallen partner, but nevertheless an odd calm comes over him. Maybe it’s confidence from defeating the Prospector or a renewed sense of purpose coming with ownership of the bookstore, but he doesn’t bother interrogating the feeling. He smirks and walks into his bookstore as the ticking continues.
He can’t wait to see how his story ends.
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