Free Nomad by JL Bryan Page A

stick.
    Raven had welcomed the old man inside and heated a can of soup for him. He had asked to speak privately. She did the best she could, taking him behind the ragged sheet of a curtain that marked off her sleeping area, where they sat on a blanket. Kari and the others stayed in the front area, watching a holographic movie ripped from a commercial satellite feed.
    "It's killing me to come speak to you," Taggart had said, his voice hoarse. He coughed into the sleeve of his worn Army-surplus coat. He'd once been a prominent professor of economics who was never seen in public without a coat and tie. "I'm betraying your father by asking for your help, but there is no one else I can trust anymore. The rebellion is filled with spies."
    "I know," Raven said. "You're not betraying my father, either. He would want me to help."
    "He would want you to live. If you do this, you will not...but if you succeed, all of it will end. The world can be changed back, it truly can. And if you succeed, the war will never have happened at all."
    "I'm sorry, I don't understand." Raven felt troubled by his words. He was clearly physically ill, but now she worried for his mental health, too.
    "Because I'm not making any sense, am I?" He gave her a thin-lipped smile. "I'm speaking out of order. The regime has developed an experimental device. A time-travel mechanism."
    "I don't...think that's possible. Is it?" Raven asked, even more concerned about the state of her elderly friend's mind.
    'The scientists involved have been cautious, sending simple objects an hour into the future, an hour into the past. Two days ago, they ran their first live-animal test. The world's first time traveler is a white lab rat named Snappy."
    "Are you joking?"
    "He traveled sixty minutes into the past. He was groggy, but in perfect health. After he recovered, he was right back to his old, snappy ways." Taggart had paused to cough into his hand, then continued. "Initial human trials begin in a few months. They are already preparing a device for human use."
    "How could you know all this?" Raven asked, still not sure whether to believe him or worry about him.
    "A good friend of mine, a physicist, was forced into service on the project. In the old world, we often ate at the faculty cafeteria together, and we played chess--I only beat him once in fourteen years. He contacted me. I assure you, the time travel device is, unfortunately, quite real and functional. The facility is located in the Great Salt Lake Desert, in western Utah."
    "Time travel," Raven had whispered, shaking her head. "Now I wish you were crazy, but you aren't, are you?"
    "I apologize for my sanity. I do wish this were only in my mind." He'd frowned, and she remembered being struck by how wrinkled his face had become.
    "What will they do with it?" she'd asked.
    "One can imagine endless possibilities. The regime could send agents back in time, murdering leaders and others critical to the rebellion. They could destroy the revolution before it ever has a chance to organize. They could gather intelligence from the future to further consolidate their power. Time travel is the most powerful weapon since the nuclear bomb, and it may well turn out to be far more powerful than that. We can't allow them to use it."
    "That's why you're coming to me," Raven said. "You want help destroying the time-travel lab."
    "More than that," Taggart replied. He paused for another violent coughing spell and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "This can be a powerful weapon for our side as well. We have recruited one of the rebellion's best snipers, who goes by the name Pascal. We intend to send him back in time to assassinate the Secretary-General decades before he comes to power. We can change the entire past and stop all of these terrible events from occurring."
    Raven thought it over, frightened but excited by the idea.
    "If we can do that," she finally said. "Then...my parents might still be alive today. Wouldn't they?"
    "It's very