One Constant

By Dawn Kimberly Johnson

Two weeks from his thirtieth birthday in the year 2020, Temporal Agent Charleston Meeks Jr. is assigned to work for his father on a special project. The government’s Restore Point Program sends small teams back in time to save the life of one person, just once, but Charleston’s father wants to explore what would happen if the RPP intervened in the life of one person repeatedly. Charleston is tasked with saving the same child, Barnaby Rosenthal, from a series of events from birth through his teens. When Charleston approaches his terminal step—the last temporal trip an agent can make before possibly suffering permanent damage—his father forbids any further contact, but Charleston has too much invested in Barnaby to give up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781613726402

Book preview

Chapter 1

"YOU’RE joking."

I looked from the data tablet in my hand to Team Leader Leaundra’s beautiful face, her flawless dark skin, flashing dark eyes—more glint off a razor than twinkle—and knew she most certainly was not joking.

But TRD? I asked.

Her gaze fell back to her computer screen. The creepies down in Turd are running some special project and need a field agent to abuse. She glanced back up at me. And that, Meeks, would be you. Be glad you’re back in the action, kid. My superior’s fingers resumed flying over her keyboard. I had been dismissed. I turned and exited the office, opening the file on the tablet as I headed for the elevator.

On my way to the basement I read:

Barnaby Rosenthal, born in Chillicothe, Ohio, Jan. 18, 1992: went missing from Seney Road Market, Monday, April 10, 1998.

I grimaced, looking over what they had found left of the boy a week later in Great Seal State Park. A small gasp from my left reminded me I wasn’t alone in the car, and I folded the tablet to my chest, away from the prying, and apparently sensitive, eyes of the gentleman next to me. He exited two floors above my destination, leaving me alone… alone to wonder why I had been reassigned… and to the basement, of all places.

I supposed it could be further punishment for my slip-up on my last assignment. A tiny part of me wanted to hope that my father had…. But I beat that down.

The doors opened onto a long, poorly lit corridor of reinforced concrete. Not much for comfort, these creepers in the basement. As I rushed toward the matte gray double doors at the end of the hallway, my thoughts filled with images of damp earth, moss, and scuttling insects fleeing the sun. I don’t know if that came from my current surroundings or where little Rosenthal had ended up.

When I yanked open the doors of Temporal Research and Development, I was struck by two things: a light so bright I threw my arm up to shield my eyes, and a petite, disheveled lab-coated woman. She had short black hair and smelled of cherries.

Oh! Agent Meeks. I was just coming for you. She righted herself and smoothed her coat. This way, please, she urged.

I’ll follow, I said, gesturing for her to lead the way. And she did. She took off at a lope, turning down one hallway and then the next. Every hall looked the same to me—bright, shiny, slick, and white—nothing distinguishing one corridor from another, like a whiteout in a snowstorm. My previous assignments had taken place in another part of the complex which had a much more dramatic, military feel to the décor—not quite so Star Trek-kie. What exactly is the rush?

They received approval for this project just last night, and we’ve been given a two-week deadline for completion.

We rounded yet another corner, and I knew I’d never find my way back out again.

Here we are, she said, pointing to a door that might have been a different shade of white, though my eyes could have been playing tricks on me by that point. "They’ll take you through, get you suited up and off. Normally, as you know, we’d have a full briefing before you launch, but we’re close to missing this restore