Life has become rather more complicated for our heroine since she was pulled from the year 2010 three hundred years into the future, and then returned to the year 2007.  You can start her journey here.

I wasn't as upset as Jack seemed to be about Shimata being dead -- after all, he was an old guy, and old people -- I was discovering with increasing frequency the older I got myself -- die. And, I reasoned, he hadn't even actually been born yet. All we had to do was wait to be pulled back to the future, then go back in time a while so that Shimata could download the information in my head, which we could then add to the logs and make it all available on vids and auds.

While I was talking, the sky was getting darker, and a light breeze tossed the leaves on the branches around us. I shivered, and Jack put his arm around me -- lightly, tentatively. Protectively. I was going to suggest we go back into the house, but suddenly became shy, and turned my head to gaze out over the town lights on the other side of the river.

"Here's the problem," Jack said, tightening his arm around me ever so slightly. "The information that Shimata stored in your brain was transmitted using an organic interface; as he explained it to me, it can only be recovered and downloaded into a similarly organic memory -- he can't -- couldn't -- make it digital to render it virtual for the log. And he hadn't finished that yet. You haven't met Julian yet -- he's the doctor who chose you from the profiles he scanned in the first place."

"What about this Julian?"

"He's the only other person I know of who could have downloaded the information. He's dead, too."

"Uh-huh?"

"He was murdered, Sheila. They both were. We have no idea who could possibly have wanted them dead."

"Murdered? Why the hell didn't you say so? Don't you think that should have been the first thing to tell me? They were murdered?"

"I'm sorry. I -- I was just pleased to see you, and then there was so much else to talk about, and then you kissed me --"

"I kissed you? That's not how I remember it." But he was smiling. I got the feeling that he was trying to lighten the conversation, and murder isn't really a jovial subject.

"What are you trying to protect me from?"

"I'm trying to protect myself just as much. Or losing my mind. Or both." He slumped, then, and looked tired, I noticed now. I suggested we go indoors, as the night was closing in around us and the breeze had picked up over the water. We sat in the living room, by the open French doors that led out to the porch and the same view over the river.

"Sorry," said Jack. "You've been real patient, and I know there is so much I need to explain."

"Couldn't we just go back in time to before the murders, and take the research to Shimata so he can finish it?"

"That's the other thing. I've been looking for him, too -- I went back twice before I started looking for you. He's not there, in the past. Neither is Julian. They've both been -- erased, wiped out, I don't know how to describe it. They aren't there." He was shaking his head now, beaten and sagging into the chair. ". . . And I have no idea what to do next."

We went to bed after that and slept as soundly as exhausted children all night, then woke and made love in the first light, the quiet first light, in sleepy joy at finding each other and in the insanity that accompanies such discovery.

Breakfast brought us back to reality though, and my next round of questions was ready.

"What did Shimata really put into my head, that folk don't want to get out? I mean, killing two people and then erasing them -- or erasing them and then killing them -- whatever -- you don't do that if all that is in my head is stuff about history and mankind and shit, stuff people always knew and should know again."

"Shimata said you would figure it out." Jack sighed, and there was that little niggling feeling again, as if I were being manipulated or had been somehow programmed to realize or ask or wonder at the right times, at the time someone had set me to, like an alarm clock or a radio. I couldn't pin down the feeling, and I couldn't shake it, and it was beginning to annoy me.

"Figure what out?" Please don't let me be wrong about Jack, I was begging inside; please don't let me be wrong.

"That there was more to it than what was missing from our logs in the future; that he was collecting more than just encyclopedic information and computer science and Defense grid algorithms. But don't mistake me --" he broke off, seeing my face. "We need those things, too. Everything we told you was the truth. Everything."

"You just omitted part."

"Do you recall one of Ruth Flint's interviews, when you asked about religion, and they explained to you how -- after the Incursions, after the Big Blanks, when we were trying to survive -- there seemed to be so few of us, but the Mussulman Empire seemed to be in place, or what was remembered as having been in place, or what the elders -- those who had lived through that missing eighty-five years between the two blanks seemed to remember, anyway?"

"And? So? But? Therefore?" I had no idea where this could be going.

"The Mussulman Empire was most prevalent in Scandinaviam -- Europe, I mean. ell, from what we can discern --"

"Who's 'we,' Jack? Who do you work for?"

"Asia -- but I thought you knew that -- I mean, I thought I'd told you? I worked with Shimata and Julian, and we were operating under Asian orders, but I was working in Americar of course -- I didn't tell you all this? Sheila, I've been back and forward in the past and future six times in the past nine months and I gotta admit I'm beginning to lose it a little, here."

I considered this, and realized that the niggling feeling wasn't directed at Jack, but rather at the whole circumstance. This was a profound relief, and I lightened up. "I'm sorry, Jack -- go on. You work under Asian orders, but no one in America seems to know anything about what goes on in Asia or even if they are on the same calendar?"

"True. In the years after the blanks Asia deliberately cut itself off from the rest of the world -- at least, what we refer to as Asia. I've been studying a lot in my months back in this century, and I figure that our Asia comprises what you call South-east Asia. Now, the agenda was to eradicate any trace of any religion left over from before the blanks -- outside of Asia, that is. The feeling was that religion had caused much strife and devastation in the past, and that one of the benefits of the new world was that we could remove religion from the equation, at least. But I found out that no religious eradication was being performed in Asia. Shimata was able to give me a lot of information about this -- how the history of the region was mostly intact, but that interaction with the West was seen to be undesirable."

"Why do you work for them?"

"At first, it was because I thought they offered the best chance to find out what was really going on in my world, in my time. I was naive enough to think it would be rewarding work. I started working with Shimata -- or reporting to him, at any rate. Then -- he decided -- we both decided --"

He broke off again, but by now I realized that he did this when he wanted to choose his words correctly, and that he was not trying to hide information. This was also a relief.

"Take your time," I grinned, pouring him another cup of coffee that he gulped at appreciatively.

"We became double agents, I guess you would say. Instead of working to eradicate the vestiges of the past, we began to save them. So when you told me about Stonehenge and Ogham Stones and those things -- I've researched those, too -- I really felt aghast that they might be lost to us. We met Julian and recruited him ourselves. What Shimata was doing -- coming back here and uploading the information in your brain -- was all secret, from everyone. We couldn't tell anyone, Sheila, not a soul. The only people I told were a few in the Far-7 council, and Ruth Flint. And I only told them when you came through onto that transport and we 'lost you' in H-Pons Three for a while. At least, I told them you had knowledge stored that we could use; I didn't reveal the full nature of it."

"Which is?"

"A lot of public domain information garnered from the Internet, yes; but also some highly sensitive information garnered from hacking several government agencies in several countries -- "

I had a sudden thought, and interrupted him. "They're looking for you now, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"They'll look for you here."

"I'm surprised they weren't waiting for me, really. They have more resources and more men to send back to any times they choose."

I had another sudden thought, and tried to remember if I had seen anyone I didn't recognize recently, any strange faces in the area who might be looking for Jack. He saw my expression, and asked if anything was different this time -- anything at all this time in 2007, different from how I remembered it being, first time around.

This was a good question, because the time paradox wasn't what I had thought it would be. I mean, I was the Sheila who had traveled from 2010 three hundred years into the future and then back to 2007. The external events were the same; the divorce, the headlines, the weather, my depression -- but it was all being filtered through a new consciousness this time, a consciousness that had seen the future.

"No, nothing; I can't think of a thing. The neighbors are all the same, the grocery store clerks are all the same, no new faces in my usual haunts (the coffeeshop); the dog across the street is the same dog, the same movie stars are making the same movies, the same cardinals are nesting in the same trees; President Gore and the Kyoto Accord have made great strides in starting to stem greenhouse emissions and lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, and all's right with the world," I joked, trying to cover my growing nervousness.

Jack looked at me oddly, with a puzzled expression.

"President Who?"