Erasing Time Read Online Free Page A

Echo whispered, “It’s all right. The shot is to revive Taylor.”
    It worked immediately. When Taylor saw the man coming toward her, she jerked upright and screamed. The chairs weren’t stationary. Taylor’s chair swiveled and slid backward before coming to a stop. She stumbled out of it, backing up with her hands raised in front of her. “Stay away from me!”
    Echo went after her. He took hold of her arm but didn’t force her to come back to the table. “It’s all right,” he said in soothing tones. “The med has no reason to hurt you.” Jeth also stood but spoke to the med, intercepting him before he reached Taylor.
    The Strainer scientist still sat at the table, watching Sheridan intently. He leaned forward, ready to go after her if she bolted.
    Sheridan stayed seated, glaring back at him.
    Whatever Jeth said to the medic, it worked. He retreated to the back of the room, put the needle onto the cart, then leaned against the bed in a bored fashion.
    Echo led Taylor back to the table. She sat down, still trembling. Jeth patted her hand like she was a lost child. “You don’t need to be frightened.”
    Too late for that.
    The scientist spoke to Jeth, rattling off incomprehensible sentences. When he was done, Jeth turned to Sheridan and Taylor. “How long did you feel you were in stasis before you arrived at our time period?”
    “Not long,” Sheridan said, unsure who to look at when she answered. “Minutes. Hours maybe.”
    Jeth relayed her answer to the man, and he asked his next question.
    Jeth turned back to her. “Are you experiencing any residual pain?”
    “I’m experiencing a lot of residual aggravation,” she said. “Because no one will tell me when you’re sending us home.”
    “Pain?” Jeth asked again.
    Sheridan lifted her hand, using it to punctuate her words. “Aren’t you guys worried about messing around with the past? You could change something important in history.”
    “Pain?” Jeth asked patiently.
    “No,” Sheridan said.
    Taylor didn’t answer. She held her hand to her temple like she was trying to massage a headache away.
    The scientist gave Jeth his next question. “Are you experiencing any cognitive difficulties due to your reconfiguration?”
    Did an intense desire to scream at the top of her lungs count?
    Echo spoke to his father. “Ask if it’s possible to send them back. They should know.”
    Jeth hesitated, then sighed and gave in. He relayed the question to the scientist.
    The two spoke back and forth for a few minutes, and every once in a while Echo asked a question. His blue eyes were intent as he listened, disapproving. A furrow of concern creased his forehead.
    It gave Sheridan a tight, twisting feeling in her stomach. Maybe the Time Strainer had malfunctioned so badly, it would take a long time to fix it. She and Taylor exchanged worried glances.
    Finally the men finished talking and turned back to the table. Jeth steepled his fingers together. “Back in your time, were you familiar with computers?”
    “Yes,” Sheridan and Taylor said together.
    “You used the search function?”
    “Yes,” Taylor said, and Sheridan was content to let her speak for both of them. Taylor knew more about computers.
    “Imagine time as one big database,” Jeth said, “and think of yourself as one word somewhere in a billion-page document. The search function can find that word and pull it out of those billions of pages. That’s what the Time Strainer does. It finds a specific life and brings it forward in time.” He held up his hand, then let it fall back to the table. “At least it was supposed to. Perhaps the search function on your computer didn’t always work correctly. You wanted the word can and got the word scanned instead. Do you understand?” His gaze bounced between Sheridan and Taylor. “Our scientists don’t know why this happened. They’re at the Time Strainer right now trying to get the right man.”
    Well, so much for Echo’s hope that the first