CHRONO-AMBASSADOR

Chrono Ambassador: Part 0 story by ShaunWrites / art by Judyta

Doug used his open car hood as shade to stay out of the hot afternoon sun. He stared inside at his busted engine and wondered how long it'd be before he'd look pitiful enough that somebody in the supermarket parking lot would help him fix his car. He didn't own a cell phone because even if he did, who would he call?

  He was about as alone as that girl he'd been watching wander through the parking lot for the last hour. She'd check random car's tire pressure. Or inspect the wiper blades. Or clean the mirrors of all the cars in a row. It was bizarre.

  She didn't seem like a threat though. She just seemed like a child. And since everybody else he'd asked to help pretended like he wasn't there, she was worth a try.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," Doug called out from three rows away as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, "do you know anything about cars?"

  "I'm a mechanic!" She bounded over.

  How convenient? he thought. He gave her a once-over to see if she had any weapons. That's when he saw her diamond necklace. It looked real.

  "Do you have tools?" She pushed him out of the way and sized-up the engine.

  "I got a ratchet set in the trunk. Never opened it before." He popped the trunk, unwrapped the plastic, and handed it to her. "Will this do?" She was already face deep under the hood by the time he asked.

  "These things aren't too complicated anyway. Anything that can't move faster than the speed of light, is usually about a ten minute job." She examined the ratchets and bolts thoughtfully. She chose one of each and dove back in. 

  "I'm not from here," she said face deep in the car's guts. "Don't worry, though. I'm not an alien." She popped out from under the hood like a boogie man. "Oooooo take me to your leader, and all that, haha, no. It's my first time being on Earth and in this parking lot though. It's very nice here."

  "You're an alien?"

  "Saying I'm an alien in your traditional sense is like me calling you a book. Books are full of information. They're affected by gravity and universal forces. They exist in time. Are you a book?"

  "No."

"Then I'm not an alien, silly! I'm more of an idea temporarily manifested into a physical body that I willed into existence." She pulled out another ratchet and started banging and tinkering. "And since I piqued your interest, I bet you want to know how I can work on engines that can go faster that the speed of light, I bet?"

  "Well, that's not the first question --"

  "So a light year is the distance light can travel over the course of one year, right?" She grabbed the box and searched for the right tool. "So you've got two parts: you've got distance and you've got time. Are you with me so far?"

  "No. I --"

"Normally, the only way you can get further away from something is “over a period of time,” right? That's how you do it on this planet." She laid on the ground and slid under the car. "So here's the trick, you build an engine that uses time as fuel!"

  Her voice was muffled from under the car. 

  "You can actually harvest time, and it's a renewable resource too -- like solar energy -- since it's cyclical. I don't really know all the science behind it. I'm just the mechanic, hehe. But the simple way to explain it is that you fuel an engine up with about 10,000 years and it spits out as many miles as you want."

  She slid out from under the car, and motioned for a rag to wipe her face.

  "But this is probably super super complicated for someone like you who isn't familiar with the pliability of time." She took the old shirt he handed her. "My people exist between time not in it, so I guess I can understand this a lot easier."

  "Between time?"

  "Imagine that feeling you have when you're so tired you fall asleep on the couch by mistake. Then, when you just wake up the next day, the first thing you remember is the last thing you were thinking of right before you fell asleep." She motioned for him to get her some water. "Well existing in between time is like living in the moment after you fell asleep until right before you wake up."

  "That's like a weird way of putting it." He pulled a bottle of water from his trunk. "Sorry, the water's pretty hot."

  She jumped up and grabbed it. She spoke between gulps. "I specialize in 'weird ways of putting it!' I'm a University-trained Chrono-Ambassador. But I've never gotten an actual job doing it yet. We learned about other planet's cultures. There's a whole year of learning how to analogize your experiences with the experiences of other cultures. See there I go already talking about 'years'. Of course we don't use a calendar based on the rotation of your planet around the sun. Even though years a totally ludicrous way of measuring time, no offence, I use years just because it would be difficult to analogize anything in your experience to keeping time in negative subspace. Except for maybe that feeling you get when it's daylight savings time and you set your clocks back one hour, but you forget to change your alarm. Then when you wake up and you freak out because you think you're late for work, but you actually not late because you still have an hour left to sleep." 

She finished her water and handed back the bottle.

  "Now imagine if that morning freakout happened with the same crystal clarity and surprise every millisecond of every day you live. It's always a surprise what time it is."

  "Must be unpleasant."  

  "No! It's exhilarating." She launched herself back under the hood.

  "So yeah, I know all about the cultures of 1000's of inhabited planets. But I got stuck working as a mechanic, boo! I'm really a people person though so don't make my job fool you. Engines can't keep you company -- at least the non-sentient ones can't.  But you know, I like engines, too. Vroom vroom, you know? I say 'vroom vroom' because I know your combustion engines here make that sound. Our time engines are whisper quiet so the phrase is completely meaningless to a person from my culture who didn't have my training. Isn't that fun that two cultures can have so much in common and so little in common at the same time? 'At the same time' is also another one of those meaningless phrases because anyone who lives between time knows that every event that has happened or could ever happen has all already happened at the same time."

  She motioned for him to try to start the car. He got in and turned the key. The engine didn't turn, so she went back to work.

  "Being able to access any possible universe makes it weird when you know your boyfriend is related to you in another universe, you know?"

  "Where's your boyfriend right now?"

  "No, I don't have a boyfriend, sorry if you thought I was lying to you. I just assumed it would be easier to illustrate the concept to you that way rather than burden you with the existential anguish my people feel at the idea of having 100's of trillions of potential life timelines and never knowing which one is the most accurate and self-actualizing for you to settle your restless soul in." She motioned for him to try turning the engine on again. "It's a bit like going to college and being so excited with taking classes you decide to keep changing majors over and over again."

  "No, I think what you’re saying sounds a lot worse than that," Doug said from the passenger seat about to turn the key.

  "Oh no, you don't like that one? Okay, I guess it would be more like the feeling you get when you graduate from college and move to a new town, but instead of keeping all the friends you left behind, you have to kill them all with your bare hands before you leave. And that happens everytime you move from any town."

  The engine sputtered to a start.

  "Yay!" She screamed.

  "Alright, thanks!" He stared out at her celebrating through his wind-shield. "So, do I owe you anything?"

  "Nope."

She stood there in front of his car loitering. And there was a car behind him, so he couldn't back out. What was she waiting for? They made eye contact.

  "Bye?"

  Did she need a ride or something? he thought.

  "Um... what are you --"

  "Sure I'll come along with you! Where are you going?"

"My grandmother's house. We eat lunch together on Wednesdays. She lives over by Disney." 

  He opened the passenger side door. She jumped in and slammed it behind her.

  "You looked kinda lost. Do you want me to drive you around to your car?"

  "I don't have a car."

  "Of course you don't."

  "What do you mean?" She cleaned his rear view mirror with the old shirt she'd used to mop up her sweat. "Did I say something wrong?"

  "No, no, you're fine."

  "Thank you. I always get nervous when I meet someone new. People say I talk too much, but I think those people just don't like to listen to people, you know?"

  "Everyone's different."

  "You can get so much from just meeting new people, and being open to things and experiences. That's why I love the idea of working as a Chrono-Ambassador one day. You meet wonderful new people every day. That's the job, just living, and meeting, and sharing your world."

  "I'll drive you back to your house."

  "No, thank you. I'll just discorporate for the day whenever you get to where you're going."

  Have it your way then, he thought. He pulled out of the parking lot. Then, there was an odd silence. Awkward, no talking at all for maybe 5 minutes. It's like she ran out of things to say once she finished fixing the car. Small talk wasn't a problem for him though.

  "You're a pretty good mechanic."  He stopped at the red light and turned right onto the main road. She didn't respond, so he changed the subject. He saw her diamond necklace shining in the light. "That's a beautiful necklace you got there." 

  "It's what Chrono-Ambassadors get to wear when they visit Earth! I got this at graduation from a friend who told me I --"

  "I thought you weren't a Chrono-Ambassador."

  "I'm not." She shrunk in her seat.

  "One thing I can't understand is, if you can control time and infinite universes, how did you end up being a mechanic instead of doing what you want to do?"

  "People don't really like me."

  "I can't imagine why." He could imagine why.

  "People say that sometimes I seem like I'm trying to impress people with all the things I know and I'm a showoff, but I'm really not. I'm just really always excited about how amazing everything is and I think people may be suspicious of enthusiasm sometimes, you know?"

"Maybe they're just jealous of you."

  "No, it's hard to explain. In my culture, we have this concept where if a person has a lot of friends, it's more likely someone will recommend that person for a job they really want, even if that person isn't as good at that job as I'd be --"

  "We have something similar here."

  "Isn't that just awful? And there's this thing that if people think you're too much of a know-it-all, they won't want to hang out with you after work and they'll talk about you behind your back so you can't really make friends even though you want to. It's like --"

  "Yeah, we have that too."

  "That's why I'm a mechanic! People need me no matter what. And even if they don't want me around, I gotta be there anyway, you know? And then I can fix their stuff and they can see how helpful I am. And then if I get to know that person, and they get to know me, there's a chance that we can make a real breakthrough -- breakthrough in terms of lunches, and happy hours, and surprise parties and things that friends do together that make each other feel less lonely. I think it would be fun to have friends." She leaned over to him, inches away from his face. "What do you think about that?"

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