Exocycle

Agent Smith

Still shaken by her dream, Elizabeth looked at the glowing face of her watch. She had decided on Wednesday to drop Dr. Herged's Biological Psychology course, but now, because of the dream, all had changed. She sprang out of bed, crossed the cold floor and opened the closet.

Her new green party clothes were hanging there. They looked so warm and, well, green, that she quickly dressed herself exactly as she had for the big celebration at her grandparents house on Christmas day. She desperately wanted something soothing that could push the eerie red tint of her disturbing dream out of her thoughts.

Tonya and Elizabeth

The holiday parties had been three weeks ago, but those had been good times for Elizabeth after a harrowing first semester at the university. And now with a shortage of dorm rooms and all of the over-full courses, this new semester was not starting smoothly.

Elizabeth knew that she would have to hurry in order to avoid being late for class. And based on conditions in Tuesday's first class session, it was again going to be an over-full classroom so professor Herged would notice any late arrivals trying to squeeze in. Ignoring the fact that she was now quite over-dressed for a routine day at school, she stepped out into the chilly winter morning. Fresh snow blanketed the campus. The red brick walls of the old dormitories seemed to ooze red directly into her psyche. The once familiar and inviting appearance of her world had been corrupted and morphed into something alien and unsettling. There would be no escaping her dream.

Psyche. Elizabeth recalled what professor Herged had said in class on Tuesday about that ancient Greek word, but her dream was fresher in her mind, making it impossible to think about enjoyable topics like courses and parties. This had been another one of her strange and increasingly frequent dreams about Grean. This particular dream had been more vivid and detailed than any of the previous dreams about Grean, allowing Elizabeth to now realize that Grean had once been her mentor. Grean her master. In this most recent dream-like memory, they had sat together in Grean's home on a distant world under a red sun and they had spoken the ancient Greek language of Athens.

Elizabeth wanted to be a writer like her grandmother and her mother. She saw remembered words in her mind's eye and now that dreamed conversation with Grean unrolled in her thoughts like a script.

Elizabeth's dream had reminded her that she was not anything as simple as Elizabeth Smith. She held memories that went far back in time and encompassed the lives of many other women.

The Etruscan Intervention (image credits).
Luri being teleported by Grean

Those old memories returned like a flood to Elizabeth's consciousness. She had been Xanthippe during the Athens Intervention and Princess Luri during the Etruscan Intervention. Through the centuries she had been a frequent visitor to Earth, living out parts of many lives, secretly involved in many efforts to shape the course of human history. As an Interventionist agent she was recycled again and again, repeatedly trained and prepared for new missions. Somehow, she even had memories that seemed to be from the future.

Luri in the future (source)

When Elizabeth's mother had dropped her off at college the previous fall, she had encouraged her daughter to obtain a degree in some field that could likely provide employment. "I know you enjoy writing, but you need a backup plan. Almost nobody can make a living by writing."

Elizabeth was still struggling to imagine her future and the shape her life might take. She loved science but she did not want to have to be a pioneer, fighting to break into a male-dominated science. Back in September she had begun her exploration of science with an introductory biochemistry course, but out of sixty students only five had been women. It was a team-taught course, but none of the professors was a woman.

In October Elizabeth had discovered Christine Ladd and found a copy of her book, Colour and Colour Theories. Now Elizabeth was trying to gain entry to the psychology department, but it was one of the university departments bulging at the seams with baby-boomer students, many of them young women. She had gotten the last available slot in a 7:30 AM class session. Somehow Elizabeth had allowed herself to imagine that the instructor for the class might be a hip young woman. After learning that her new instructor was the exasperatingly dry and wooden Dr. Herged, Elizabeth had begun looking for an alternative course to take. Out of frustration with all of the full and over-subscribed courses, she'd even toyed with the idea of joining the swim team.

Racing across campus and thinking deeper into her dream, Elizabeth was now certain that during the night she had "dreamed" of receiving orders to keep attending Dr. Herged's course. Was it the intrusion of those new orders into her mind that had triggered her ancient memories of Athens and Grean?

Right up until the last minute, Elizabeth hoped that some of the psychology students would have already dropped out of Dr. Herged's course, but she saw that the classroom was crowded and every seat occupied. Students were supposed to be in their assigned seats, and Elizabeth stopped next to her seat, which was occupied by a tall, red-haired girl. "You're in my seat."

It was 7:30 and Dr. Herged was ready to begin lecturing, and he said, "On Tuesday, I mentioned the pre-Socratic-" but he paused and said to Elizabeth, "Is there a problem?"

The girl with red hair got up from Elizabeth's assigned seat and went to the back of the classroom. Elizabeth sat down and Dr. Herged said, "I must insist that any auditing students stand at the back of the room... at least until we get our first wave of dropouts and over-sleepers."

Elizabeth could only half listen to Dr. Herged's lecture. Her thoughts were trapped in the cascade of memories that was flowing into her consciousness, memories of her previous lives.

When the lecture was over, the boy sitting next to Elizabeth said, "I hope you apologize to Tonya."

The red-haired girl had made her way through the ocean of chairs, moving against the current of students leaving the lecture hall. She gave Elizabeth a quick head-to-toe visual inspection and said to the boy, "Don't bother, she's too stuck up... she won't even admit to knowing us."

Elizabeth tried to clear her mind of thoughts echoing from her previous lives and she struggled to keep her thought stream in the present moment of her current body and not drift into the vast ocean of newly revived memories that lured her into the past. Cluelessly, Elizabeth asked, "Do I know you?"

The boy explained, "We were in the same introductory biochemistry class last semester." He stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

Elizabeth rose to her feet and looked carefully at the red-haired girl. Elizabeth decided that her hair had been dyed red and now the roots were coming in as another color, a bland light brown. Elizabeth also noticed that the boy was a couple of inches taller than her own six feet. For a moment she had a flash of memory -or premonition- of putting her arms around his broad shoulders. Finally, she recovered a vague memory of them both from the previous fall: just two of the sixty or so students who had been in her biochemistry class. Elizabeth now recalled that in the second half of the semester, these two had always been together, apparently a couple. All of those thoughts passed through Elizabeth's mind in two seconds then she said, "Now I remember you two." She reached out and placed a hand on Tonya's shoulder. "I'm sorry that I kicked you out of my seat. When I arrived late I should have stood in back."

Tonya shook her head, "No, don't be silly." She patted Elizabeth's hand with her own. "When I tried to register into this course yesterday all I got was an audit slot. They warned me that it could be weeks until a seat is available for me."

The boy laughed, "It seems like brutal conditions in the Psych department! I can't believe that there are assigned seats and teaching assistants taking attendance during class. Still, some students are dropping. Just yesterday my waiting list slot was upgraded to enrollment."

Elizabeth nodded, "Yes, it is quite different than in Biochem where every class is under-subscribed. Strange that we are all switching over to psychology."

Tonya said. "We're still biochemistry majors." She slipped an arm around the boy's waist.  "Did you switch to psychology?"

How could she respond to that question? With access to her old memories, Elizabeth now realized that she had been switched to a new major so as to better carry out her secret mission. Sadly, she could not explain to these two Earthlings the nature of her secret mission on Earth. For one thing, she was herself having trouble remembering exactly what her mission was. Elizabeth said, "Yes, I switched my major. I'd like to get into a profession where there is some sort of balance. Last semester I got severely depressed by the fact that there are so few women in Biochemistry."

Tonya laughed. "That's only going to change if people like you and I become biochemists."

Elizabeth admitted, "True. To be honest, my real dream is to become a writer, but my family insists that I be practical."

The boy seemed to look upon Elizabeth with interest for the first time. He asked, "What do you like to write about?"

Tonya turned a chair around and sat down, tired from having stood during the long lecture. Elizabeth and the boy also sat down so as not to tower over her.

Elizabeth said, "I write alternative histories. Currently, I'm writing a story about a timeline in which Lincoln was never assassinated."

The boy asked Elizabeth, "Did you ever read The Last Starship from Earth? It is a novel about an alternate timeline."

Image credits

Elizabeth had never heard of that novel, but she realized that somehow she knew all about that book and its author. For ten minutes the three of them discussed the alternative timeline of The Last Starship from Earth and then Dr. Herged had finally finished talking to students and exited from the classroom, giving the three of them a long look as he walked past.

Tonya winked at Elzabeth and said, "Just to annoy professor Herged, you two should write a story about an alternate history in which Socrates was not put to death."

Elizabeth had personal memories of the day when Socrates had died. He had been experimenting with coniine and other drugs, trying to alter his brain's activity and gain control of the Bimanoid Interface. But the Overseers had made sure that he over-dosed and died. Only later did a Reality Change occur, leading to the current timeline which included the legend that Socrates had been put on trial and executed by his fellow Athenians. Elizabeth now looked even more carefully at Tonya and realized that she was a tryp'At.

The boy laughed. "Interesting idea, Tony, but I don't think Herged would be amused."

Tonya said to Elizabeth, "Can you forgive me for calling you 'stuck up'?"

Elizabeth glanced at the boy's faded and torn jeans and knew it was possible that her fancy party clothes cost more than all the clothing he owned. She replied, "Only if you promise to sit in my seat during class next Tuesday."

Tonya and the boy slipped into a nerdy discussion of a time travel novel by Isaac Asimov called The End of Eternity. Elizabeth realized that she also knew all about that story, although she was certain that she had never read it. Like pushing away a wall of cobwebs, Elizabeth's mind finally cleared and she could remember how it was possible to know about things without personally experiencing them. She knew that she was being summoned.

Claiming the need to get to another class, Elizabeth excused herself and departed. Exiting from the classroom, she went up a flight of stairs and into a women's room. Passing through the door, Elizabeth tried to understand why she had been maneuvered into meeting Tonya, but that mission detail did not seem to exist in her memory streams. She went into a stall, closed the door and suddenly she was teleported off of Earth.

Elizabeth found herself in Svahr's workshop. She was somewhat disoriented and knew that she was no longer on Earth, but Elizabeth was thankful that there was no murky red light and no sign of Grean or any other Kac'hin. It was not clear that Svahr was human, but at least she had taken care to give herself the appearance of being human. Elizabeth suspected that they were hidden away in some corner of the Hierion Domain, however, for security reasons, she had never been told the location of Svahr's secret base of operations.

Svahr casually said, "Welcome back."

Elizabeth recalled that "she" had been sent to Earth 18 years previously and inserted into the zeptite endosymbiont of the newborn baby named Elizabeth Smith. As a deep agent on Earth, she had come to be Elizabeth, but now Svahr apparently felt the need to interrupt Elizabeth's mission. Still feeling disoriented by her sudden access to an ocean of suppressed memories, Elizabeth muttered, "Hello, Svahr."

Wasting no time on small talk, Svahr gestured towards a projected image of Tonya. "Allow me to explain why I have positioned both you and Tonya at the Triversity." Svahr was carefully monitoring the activity of Elizabeth's brain and shoring up its weaknesses. Those weaknesses had been revealed by her unusual response to the new infites that Svahr had teleported into Elizabeth's brain during the night. Elizabeth should not have spontaneously recovered her ancient memories of Grean, memories that Svahr had so carefully obscured.

Elizabeth nodded. "It startled me to discover that Tonya is tryp'At. Is she taking-over my mission?"

Svahr sighed. She had allowed Elizabeth to become aware of the fact that Tonya was tryp'At. Left to herself, Elizabeth would never have noticed that little detail. "I need you to assist Tonya. It is important that she become a successful biochemist and win the Triversity undergraduate biochemistry prize three years from now."

Elizabeth was swimming through a cloud of old memories. Somehow she knew the basic outlines of her current mission, but the details had been covered over by a lifetime of being on Earth as Elizabeth. She asked uncertainly, "Wasn't that my original reason for being on Earth?"

Svahr replied, "Exactly so, however, not knowing what difficulties might arise, I originally positioned several of my agents on Earth as possible biochemistry prize winners. Now I've decided that you and Tonya need to team-up in order to win the prize."

Elizabeth complained, "I don't understand the importance of this. Why should Tonya win the prize?"

Svahr was irked by the fact that Elizabeth felt herself to be competing against Tonya. "This has nothing to do with Tonya. Or you. We simply must prevent her boyfriend from winning the prize."

Elizabeth guessed, "That boy, the nerdy biochemistry major who is obsessed with science fiction?"

Svahr nodded. "Yes. If he were to win the biochemistry prize then he would stay on at the Triversity and not ever meet Gohrlay."

Elizabeth had forgotten all about Gohrlay: the fixed point in Time, the girl from the First Reality whose brain had become the template for the positronic brain. She asked, "Wouldn't it be easier to bring Gohrlay to the Triversity?"

Svahr laughed, "You might think that should be so, but no. This is how it must be: she's waiting on the West Coast. Remember, we are improvising and flexibility is our key to success. I need to make use of your skills as a writer. From now on, you will do all of Tonya's written assignments and craft her senior thesis and, most importantly, allow her to focus on her laboratory experiments. At the same time, you will play a roll in turning the boy away from his interest in writing. Take every opportunity to share drafts of your alternate history stories with him. I've seen the future and the example of your excellent writing will discourage him from spending time developing his own lesser writing skills."

Elizabeth felt uneasy about that. "Is that a good idea? All of my story ideas are based on past Realities. And besides, I don't mind helping someone like Tonya become a successful biochemist, but I don't want to hurt someone, or even diminish the joy they get from writing."

Svahr shrugged. "That is no problem. In the future, when the time is right, he is to be the one who will reveal the Secret History of Humanity to the people of Earth. You will only temporarily deflect his interest in story telling. Eventually, far in the future, he will realize that your stories were based on fact, but that is all part of our plan."

Elizabeth had no memory of having traveled through time to the future. She asked, "So it is true? We can travel to the future?"

Svahr explained, "You have some memories of the future because I have allowed you to View parts of the future. I provide you with everything you need in order to complete your mission on Earth, but - I will say no more! Time travel is a sensitive topic and it would not be wise to let Earthlings become aware of the existence of time travelers. And there is one last thing you need to know." Svahr raised her hand and sent a cloud of infites into Elizabeth.

For a minute Elizabeth tried to assimilate the new information that flooded her mind. Finally she blurted out, "You expect me to take this boy away from Tonya? I can tell that they really like each other... I don't want to take that away from them."

Teleporter Tricks

Svahr calmly suggested, "Think it through." Svahr allowed Elizabeth some additional time with the new infites, then she continued, "The best way to attract Tonya's attention is by showing a romantic interest in the boy. Eventually, you and Tonya will move in together and become a team. The three of you are tryp'At, so his love for Tonya will not be derailed when he also falls in love with you. Also, before he moves to Seattle, the boy will become romantically involved with another girl named Hana. But, ultimately, he must move on to Seattle and link up with Gohrlay."

Her head swirling with new ideas, Elizabeth realized that some of her new "memories" were from Svahr and provided a glimpse of the future events that would occur as Svahr had just described them. Elizabeth began to wonder how she could be sure that Svahr's vision of the future was all for the best, but her questioning thoughts were silenced and she found herself back on Earth, now only vaguely aware that she, like Tonya and the boy, was tryp'At and thus well-suited to perform her role as an Interventionist agent.

Elizabeth's memories of Svahr and the future quickly receded into a dark cloud of sinking memory fragments, like her waking dream of that morning. Her vast chain of ancient memories stretching far back into her many lives in past ages would remain available as the basis for her competence, empathy and wisdom and as topics for her stories, but those memories would not distract her from being Elizabeth and accomplishing her current mission.

Elizabeth knew that she was an Interventionist agent who could not discuss her secret mission with any Earthlings, but at that moment, mostly she was still just Elizabeth Smith, would-be writer and unable to stop thinking about the tall boy she had spoken to after her psychology class.

At that moment, Elizabeth suddenly recovered one more "dream" from the previous night. She had been watching Tonya via a hierion tube and had seen her sleeping. Her boyfriend was there, too, and when he had finished reading a paperback novel, he awakened Tonya with a gentle kiss.

And now, mysteriously, Elizabeth had a clear memory of the location of his dorm room and knowledge that later that evening, after the science library closed, she would intercept the boy on his way back to his room. Now Elizabeth had no doubt about the shape of her future.

Next: telepathy in 1939

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