She’d done the things she usually did, though this was the longest time she’d spent in one place.This should make the flow of time around her more quiescent.So why was time still unhappy?
She stepped down a curb, crossed the street after looking both directions, and turned left, grateful for the protection provided by her wide-brimmed hat.
The next corner brought her to Roswell’s Main Street with its various shops lining both sides.She checked the time—very aware of the irony of that—and caught sight of herself in a big window.She paused, pretending to study the display.
It always startled her to see herself like this.The image wasn’t crisp and seemed to waver like the edges of time.Or perhaps it was time distorting her view of herself?
She’d seen herself prior to her jump, but it wasn’t the same as being on location.She fit in, which of course was the plan.The skirt of her dress flared just as much as was fashionable here in Roswell.Her hat was the right size, and her shoes and undergarments were both correct to the period and painful to wear.
The bra always startled her.It was so pointy.She didn’t think she’d ever get used to that.The heels she kind of got.They did make good legs look great.
She resumed her stroll in the direction of today’s press conference.She’d listened to all the local gossip the last few days and definitely had a better understanding of why the US military had never been able to get the conspiracy theories under control.
These people didn’t like anyone—and certainly not anyone from the outside—telling them what to think or believe.
She liked that about them.
She kept her gaze moving first left, then ahead, then to the right.So far she hadn’t seen any signs of extreme, or even minor changes from the accepted time line.
It puzzled her why she was here.Her brief—like on the last ten missions—was to observe and report.Report what?That life went on?
And why so many missions in a row?It kind of felt like they were trying to get her out of the office.This made her lips twitch into an almost smile that quickly faded.Was paranoia catching?Everywhere she’d been sent recently had been places enduring high levels of paranoia.
She disguised the wry head shake in a glancing survey.More likely she was just time-fatigued.Normally an agent didn’t travel as often as she had, nor in such a short time frame.While she’d be spending several days here, when she returned to the base, only a few hours would have passed.The mental and physical disconnect somehow increased the fatigue factor, even with a couple of nights sleep in the past.
So she’d have done fifteen days into the past in one work day.That kind of intense travel could mess with your head and the body didn’t like it much either.
She’d need to ask for a day or two off when she got back.Too bad she couldn’t take her break in the past somewhere.
She let herself mull where she’d like to vacation, but only for a few minutes.Today was the day of the press conference and her reason for being here.She needed to pay attention.
The first thing she noticed was that the instabilities at the edge of her vision were getting more insistent the closer she got to her destination.
She studied the people drifting toward the area.She could tell just by looking at them who believed in the alien crash and who didn’t.
With a tiny sense of shock, Rita realized that she didn’t actually know if an alien ship had crashed here, or if all this was because their time craft had crashed here.
Maybe they’d collided?She suppressed a grin at the thought.
The early time travel vehicles had been more unstable than time.Later models had been sent back to try to clean up the various messes those early experiments had left behind.
Over time—irony moment here—the devices had gotten small enough to be handheld, though time travel craft was still used for deploying teams.
Sometimes it made her temples hurt to think about “earlier” in the context of traveling here from the future to fix what had been done in the past future.Or was it the future past?
The technology had gotten better but somehow the past stayed messy.
Rita had a feeling that some of those attempts had just made matters worse.There were some locations designed as no-go sites.
She paused to look around, uneasy at the sight of the increasing instability around her.For an instant, she thought she caught a glimmer of this same street empty except for one or two people in clothing that was different enough she knew she’d caught a glimpse of an even more distant past.It blinked out of view before she could take in much detail.
But no sign of aliens, she pointed out to herself, hoping the bit of humor would help ground herself again.It was dangerously easy to fall into time displacement syndrome and totally lose track of who you were, where you came from, and even how to get back there.
They’d have to send in a retrieval team to clean up the mess and how embarrassing would it be to be the mess?
The heat had definitely made it deep into her bones and was now working its way out as a flush—or possibly a sunburn.Was that the right word for burning from the inside out?It felt like she was going up in flames.
At least everyone around her looked hot, too.The women were fanning themselves and the men’s handkerchiefs were turning sodden from continuous application to brows and necks.
