Perched on his rock, he zipped up the the high collar of his sweater, protecting his neck and  the humble beginnings of a beard from the night. He twisted off the thermos lid and poured the remaining half cup of tea into the lid, savouring the warmth on his hands. Soon, it would be too cold to come listen like this. The rock, wide and flat and accommodating as it was no longer received enough sun during the day to radiate comfort in the wee hours. In a matter of weeks, if not days, clouds and snowfall will quiet the stars, and Niven and his kind will endure the white silence.

Every rock, hill, island, and each city roof top yields a different arrangement of the score as ancient frequencies Doppler past. In the long shadows of winter, they will complete their transcriptions. In basements, in libraries, and out of the way coffee shops, they’ll meet to compare the longitudinal pitch shifts and latitudes of rhythmic variation. Ink stained hands will dance in proclamation of genius, piety, doom, and the sanctity of night.  The papers annotated, filed and eventually archived so other generations may know the subjective and second hand beauty of the stars.

The last notes fade into the ripening morning light and the stars take a bow. As near as Niven could tell, the performance suggested war is destined to exist in one form or another for all eternity. He finished his tea, shook the straggling drops out of the lid-slash-cup, and threaded it back onto the thermos.

Like the others, he will wait patiently for spring, sleepless blankets pulled high and windows shuttered against the snowy glare.  The rock will be there in May. The stars, too. He will have a new season of questions, a warmer sweater, and a bigger thermos.

The October wind reddened Dave’s cheeks and quickened his step. Even four blocks was feeling too far in this weather. He decided to risk cutting through the alley. It was dark, but it wasn’t late. He’d used the short cut all summer and nothing bad happened. Dark and cold don’t increase danger, he told himself. Ahh, rationalization – one of the joys of being human.

Two yards into the alley, the sodium glow of the street lamps disappeared behind a dark zipper of shadows cast by aging brownstones and overflowing dumpsters. Under foot, the pavement felt cracked, uneven, and a little slick. Dave walked cautiously, putting his attention not on the darkness ahead, but the beckoning glow of light at the other end of the alley. A hand, broad and heavy draped over his shoulder. His heart stopped mid-beat and his knees were as supportive as pudding. It was all he could do not to piss himself.

A bowling ball voice spoke from well above Dave’s head.
“Toby, just relax. Everything will be fine.”
“B-b-b-but my name’s not Toby,” Dave said.
“I know that,” the voice said. “A little relaxation wouldn’t hurt you either, though. Toby is the rat that levitated you.”

Dave looked down, and saw he was a good three inches off the ground. His instinct was to run. However, he realized that between the feet in the air and the hand on his shoulder, he would go nowhere. Sure enough, there was a small pair of glistening black eyes amidst the candy wrappers and pizza boxes to his left. His fear turned to anger, then curious definace.

“Magic rats?” said Dave. “What makes me so damn special I get to meet magic rats and a friggin’ giant tonight?”

“Nothing special about it. Toby here just turned three, and it’s time he learned to use his powers.”

“Powers? Rats have special powers? Come on,” Dave said.
“Not all rats,” said the voice from above and behind, “just some of the newer models.”

“Newer models?” Dave echoed. He felt his feet touch down on firm ground, and the hand lifted from his shoulder. He felt safer, somehow protected.

“Yes, newer models. Toby here is one of our latest, and a very quick learner. A model recruit, if I say so myself. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t, but it’s Dave.” He felt warmer, more comfortable. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he turned to look at the man with the large hands. He was enormous. In the alley, he was dark against dark. Dave could make out a gaunt, bearded face under long, thin hair, and the silhouette of a tattered trench coat atop faded jeans and scuffed, worn at the heel cowboy boots.

“I must go now, and tend to the others. Toby will show you to your new home,” Said the man.

Dave flicked his tail, and squeezed under a pile of wet boxes right benind Toby, off to start a new life.

The light gradually increased and Noel heard voices. Unable to turn and look, he simply had to listen and wait. Voices was too generous a term. It was a sound like the gobbling of turkeys broadcast on a poor quality AM radio. Undulating, unevenly pitched, yet purposeful sounds. The speakers paused, and two sets of footsteps approached.

Noel could feel the presence of who, or whatever, stood nearby. There was a spate of purposeful clucking noises, then silence. An eggplant purple, ovoid head leaned in over top of Tayak’s face. The top of the skull, where it began to taper to a point, was covered in a fine mesh of silken fibers that twinkled like water in sunshine whenever the creature moved it’s head. There was nothing he would consider eyes, and only layer upon layer of thin, rose petal pink flesh where humans would have a mouth. It appeared to have no sensory organs whatsoever. When it spoke, and the gill-like veils of flesh move like curtains in a breeze.

The other one wheeled a machine over, and lowered a large metal ring on a spring loaded arm over the captain’s chest. It emitted light in the form of green cross-hairs, which were lined up, near as Tayak could tell from his restrained point of view, right over his heart. The sweat stung his eyes, and he nervously clenched and unclenched his fists. The first one, the talker, reached for his face. Three short tentacles, the underside leathered and gritty like the paw of a small dog or house cat, touched Noel’s face.

The Ovoid pulled at Captain Tayaks’s cheek, exposing the bloodshot underside of his eyeball. He felt the dryness of the room in his tear ducts and began weeping.

Noel Tayak had worked on developing the SSPS, or Solar System Positioning System, while an undergraduate. When he was offered a position in flight school, fast-tracked and with full scholarship, it was a no-brainer. What boy doesn’t grow up wanting to be an astronaut? The sheer thrill of it all eclipsed the whys and wherefores of the situation. The Universal Territories space program regularly sent Mary, a recruitment officer, around to chat with him at least once a month. In his second semester, full of caffiene and enthusiasm, Noel had explained the subject of interstitial matrices, and the identification and cataloging of polydimensional time-space coordinates. Mary smiled, and asked if he would mind if she took the napkins he had written his diagrams and equations on. “I got ‘em on the computer at home. You go right ahead,” he had replied.

Noel didn’t know it, but right after that meeting she dialed a number at Universal Territories. It went to voice mail, and she left a five word message: “He’s the one. He’s ready.”

The chronosphere glowed dark blue. Inside the electrostatic fluid churned and frothed like an angry sea. The various clockwork rods rotated with increasing speed. Soon, their respective velocities would overcome the magnetic forces that kept them apart from one another. The trajectory of the past rod brought one end out of the fluid and electricity arced bright and graceful against the inside of the heavy glass sphere. The present spun like helicopter blades, and the future toppled end over end. With each rotation, it came closer to the surface as it rose closer to the surface. Harold put the cat down and placed the photo next to the chronosphere.

“I told them this day would come, Clyde.” The professor removed his glasses and polished them on his wrinkled plaid shirt, and pointed them at his tubby, indifferent cat. “Mark my words, kitty. This is the beginning of the end. Which, of course is nothing more than a new beginning. But we can’t expect the big-wigs and hot shots to believe that, can we?”

“1968,” he announced to the cat,” you remember the year. “The sphere got dark and cloudy. The history rod almost stopped completely, the present was a blur, and the future spun so slowly it may as well have been still. Nixon, Hippies, Vietnam; the Black Panthers, Dr. King. Turbulent times. Mind you, we also got Laugh In and 2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Clyde blinked at the professor, and returned to his nap, unimpressed by the history lesson.

Harold poured himself three fingers of Macallan single malt. He swished it in the heavy tumbler and sipped. The soft, pleasant burn loosened his tongue, and he continued lecturing the cat.

“Mind you, things weren’t much better when the present and future sunk to the bottom, and history went like a bat out of hell there in the late nineties.”  He sipped again, rolled the scotch around his mouth before swallowing. “Clinton behaves like Kennedy, we try and start another Cold War in the desert. Then there were the ice storms, heatwaves, and our good ol’ friend El Nino.” He finished the scotch, and pours another.

“Speaking of natural disasters, Seinfeld said goodbye in ninety-eight.” He raised his glass in tribute, then downed it. “But enough about then. This is all about now. Well, relatively speaking, anyway. The simultaneous is about to subsume the sequential. You know what that means, kitty?” Clyde made a point of looking up and past Harold rather than at him, then returned to grooming his front paws.

“Yes, well, frankly neither do I. More’s the embarrassment as I’ve made it my life work to study time. I create the most important time keeping device since the Mayans, and I get shunned. A laughing stock. Fringe science, they call it”

“And the future,” he said, fondly running a finger over the image of his beloved Annette beside him in the photo, “when the future spun out of control and mangled the present, we lost much more than we expected.”

Harold pulled chair up next to the chronosphere, and put the remainder of the Macallan within easy reach. He looked to the photo on the table, then into his almost empty glass. He stared as the three rods representing the past, present, and the future. They spun increasingly out of control. He raised a hand and felt the heat from the chronosphere increasing. One rod or the other breached the surface of the fluid, and arcs of electricity flashed against the inside of the sphere relentlessly, throwing elongated shadows of Harold against the basement walls.

“It’s happening Clyde. This time it’s really happening. The three phases of time will collide and become one. We will begin anew.” The increased activity made the chronosphere rattle against its pedestal, and Harold steadied it with his hand. It was almost too hot to touch. With the other hand, he grabbed the scotch. Foregoing a glass, he drank from the bottle. “All right, time, you wretched beast, I’m ready for you – do your worst!”

Presently, the three rods fused. The fluid settled. Past, present, and future bobbed gently on the surface, like driftwood near the shore. Harold realized he had been holding his breath, and exhaled loudly.

“We made it Clyde. We did it old friend; we weathered the time storm.” He clapped his hands in drunken delight, and did a pathetic little dance step. “All is one, one is all. Space and time are unbound. We are as free to wait for yesterday as we are to anticipate tomorrow. Anyone that ever has or ever will exist does exist. What say we go have a look-see, shall we?”

Harold stumbled up the stairs. Same bowl of half eaten, melting ice cream. Same TV guide, same TV channel. And no Annette. He shut his eye tight against the the sorrow and regret. Why had he shown her the chronosphere? He’d encouraged her to touch it, to feel the warmth. When the singularity occurred, she became infinite.  Time stole his bride.

His daughter sat on the couch, in the dark. “Hi, Dad. Mrs Windermere called when she saw the flashing lights. Any luck this time?”

Harold slumped against the wall, choking back tears. “Nope. I’m still here, and she’s still there. Wherever and whenever there is.”