ARBITRATORS: JON AND JULIETTA PROTECT THE TIMELINE

By Wes Clarkson

A young couple, Jon de Golada and Julieta de Avila play key roles during a conflict in the Kingdom of Castilla as the 12th Century ends and the 13th begins. Travelers from the far future have inserted themselves into this epoch planning to change the timeline of history for their own benefit. Jon comes to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesley Clarkson
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088033548

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ARBITRATORS

JON AND JULIETTA PROTECT THE TIMELINE

Wes Clarkson

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Wes Clarkson

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First Edition © 2022 by Wes Clarkson

eBook ISBN: 978-1-0880-3354-8

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Dedications

This book is dedicated to Sawyer, the wonderful child of my friend Katie McElheny. By some odd confluence of fate, Sawyer was born on the day I finished writing this story.

Act I

Julieta de Tornadizos de Ávila

In the 12th Century AD, my homeland was in conflict, suffering from a four-hundred-year war between two diametrically opposed alliances of nobles, who just happened to adhere to two distinct but distantly related religious traditions. When Jon and I attained adulthood, the Caliphate and Catholic aristocrats of Hispania dressed in identical styles, spoke the same mixture of Romance languages and experienced similar situations of luxury. They engaged in commerce with each other and intermarried to the point that they were all cousins.

They were, after all, the descendants of the ruling classes of those who invaded the slowly deteriorating Roman Empire as it fractured into smaller and smaller pieces. They had entered the land from both the North and South, attracted by the lack of leadership in the peninsula. The land was rich and had an abundant peasant population to exploit the treasures and resources of the land. Those commoners produced their food, built their castles, and served in their armies, switching sides from one master to another without a second thought. Their lands were conquered and reconquered repeatedly in a long struggle between competing views of a god who condemned unbelievers and punished sinners.

My love and I assumed a thorny undertaking. Hispania would eventually emerge as a powerful nation, unified by blood and battle over a lengthy and arduous era. Our task was to protect that intricate process from outsiders who sought to alter the eventual outcome. I don’t pretend that those we protected were necessarily moral or righteous. Many were selfish and contentious, warring with each other over the most trivial issues, but they were known as the Nobility, a somewhat contradictory term, to say the least.

However mean-spirited and selfish they might have been, did not change the fact that Jon and I were called to the weighty task as arbitrators and protectors of the course of history that some sought to alter for their own benefit.

Chapter 1: A Circle of Fire

Jon de Golada

Into this chaotic time, I, Jon de Golada, arrived, dressed as a young caballero of the Realm. I rode my stallion, Caesar, through a brilliant circle of light that led from a place far in the future and arrived in a secluded mountain meadow between Ávila and Toledo. On this somber night in the middle of the Year of Our Lord, 1190, I arrived with a duty to undertake. This obligation would take me the better part of the rest of my extremely long life.

The first strong impression that struck my senses was the smell of a mountain forest. I had passed directly from a warehouse-style building filled with advanced equipment and dozens of people to a quiet grassy meadow surrounded by tall trees. The mixed scents created by the grasses and trees contrasted sharply with the modern technological odor dominated by ozone and harsh chemicals back at The Centre.

If anyone from the 12th Century had been near enough to experience the strange sounds and bizarre illumination that disturbed the dry, dust-filled air of that hot summer night, they would have encountered nothing but mystery and wonder. Perhaps they would have reported visions of the Madonna and all her holy angels, but, alas, no one was there to witness this unusual occurrence that dark evening.

Except for a few brief visits back home in Galicia, I had been away from my home during my late childhood and teens, living and learning in another place and another time. I came with the knowledge and resources necessary to establish myself in this society with an important task. Someone was trying to change the past, and I had to stop those changes from wrecking the General Timeline, the accepted sequence of critical historical events.

Luckily, all temporal displacement arrivals are designed to happen in prearranged isolated locations. The displacement started with a bright light situated about one meter above the level of the road. As the brightness of the light grew, voices could be heard coming from the light. Instruments say we're right on the money, one said. Date and time of day are nominal, another added. Location is nominal, a third one said. After this, a loud humming noise became evident as the light source grew more extensive, and a clear area began to grow in the middle of it.

As it grew, more and more details of something could be seen as if on the other side of a window. A large room was filled with strange equipment and individuals who looked out of place in the Twelfth Century. I stood directly in front of this window, waved to those behind me and then mounted my horse, Caesar. Two other horses, Enigma and Luna, trailed behind.

Out of this apparition, I rode without a human retinue. A black and white dog loped at my side and a bald eagle perched on one of the trailing horses. We entered a time and place very different from the one that he had come from. I rode a fine stallion trailed by two mares laden with moderately large leather bags bulging with my possessions. Once through the time portal, it quickly closed behind me, and all was quiet and dark again.

I could be described as a tall, muscular man with long blond hair and a well-trimmed beard with a mustache, fitting the image of a nobleman of this Century. I was dressed in the finest clothing that this period had to offer. My rank and station, as declared by my attire and possessions, was one of noble birth.

I was armed with a long sword of fine steel. It had been created by the technical wizards of that future Century made of an alloy not seen in this period. It would not break under any circumstances and could cut through even the best steel blades that Toledo swordsmiths had to offer. My leather doublet and other apparel were made of armored fabric, the type worn by soldiers in the future. Among my belongings, I carried devices that gave me capabilities beyond the imagination of those in his new present.

The most important of these was my Journal, officially called a libratechnion. That word wouldn't mean much to a person living in the 12th Century, so I simply called it my Journal. It looked like an expensive, smallish leather-bound book filled with gilt-edged pages of heavy parchment. Its pages appeared to be a hand-copied book that a Nobleman might carry with him, but it was much more than a book. The hand-written text on the pages provided me with the information and instructions I needed for my tasks, but they were not static. I could call up a wide variety of topics as needed for my calling, and the text on the pages would change. Some pages had communication functions like texting another individual with a similar artifact. Other pages displayed typical decorative art that would resolve into a video feed when needed. All of its operations were driven by an artificial intelligence of extraordinary potential.

These technological miracles were not the only advantages I had brought with me. I had been given abilities that would genuinely be considered magical by people of this era. I could look through the eyes of Maddie, the eagle that had been joined mind-to-mind with me since hatching. Kate, a genetically modified canine that resembles a husky breed, shared her exquisite senses of smell and hearing with me, as well.

As soon as we had arrived, Maddie had taken off to fly a surveillance pattern above us. I took in all that she could sense in the pale moonlight through her genetically enhanced night vision. She made a large circle around us as we rode through the high mountain pass between Toledo and Ávila, showing me the details of a small square fortress in the distance. It had rounded towers on three corners and a more substantial building on the fourth, where the entry gate was located. Additionally, an unmanned curtain wall surrounded the fortress about fifty meters from it in all directions, enclosing the local inhabitants' village homes.

Maddie, the eagle, observed the soldiers who stood guard in those towers where they would have a good view over the crest of the pass and down the road in both directions.

However, being night, it was somewhat difficult for them to see me as I traveled the dirt path they called a road. The guards were also staring into a fire used to keep themselves warm, which totally ruined their night vision.

I decided to head for the fortress, which must belong to the duke of Talavera de la Riena, a small town not too distant from this high mountain pass. Surely the commander would welcome a Noble guest for the night.

Startling the soldiers on guard duty, Maddie silently glided down to perch on the battlement within a couple of meters of them. She cocked her white-feathered head and stared at them with one of her brilliantly yellow-colored eyes. One of the guards moved towards her, and she simply leaped off the battlement and flew up to a higher perch.

Just short of the castle's gate, I stopped Caesar to take a look around. Kate, my partnered dog, ran ahead quietly in the darkness to smell out what she could around the foot of the fortress walls. Her acute hearing allowed me to listen in on the guards' conversation up on the wall above the fortress gate. Mundane words were all she heard.

Sensing nothing out of the ordinary, I called out to the guard, Yo, to the castle! Is anyone there?

Who comes here at this hour of the night? was the startled response. It was evident that Maddie had been the focus of their attention as I rode up to the gate.

A simple traveler in need of a bed and a stable for my animals. I am called Jon of Golada, from the Realm of Galicia, I replied. As one of them peered over the top of the wall, Kate added a wolf-like yowl to the conversation, as was her habitual manner of communicating. She had never been one to bark, as other dogs.

Wait while I get the captain, came the short reply. While I waited, Maddie lifted off from her perch on the high wall and came down to rest on the top of one of the leather bags loaded on the two mares. Then Kate came up near me, keeping to the shadows.

Through Maddie's eyes, I had seen the guard run down the steps, cross the courtyard, and enter the main hall. He had come out a short time later with two men. One was dressed in a uniform and the other, evidently their superior, wore a fine robe of some sort.

A peep door in the gate was opened. After a short exchange with the Captain, I entered the gateway between the two portcullises. They looked me over quite thoroughly and asked a lot of questions. Of course, since none of them had the faintest idea where Golada was, they couldn't tell whether the answers I gave them were truthful or not.

The decision was made to let me spend the night. I was escorted first to the stable, where a young boy named Juan helped me unload my horses and carry my essential baggage into the main hall. There a serving girl brought food and wine for me and the captain, the man in the robe. I asked about the boy Juan, saying I needed to hire a servant.

The captain told me, Juan is an orphan we took in, but if you are interested in him, I could let him go for a small fee. After all, we have been feeding him and letting him sleep in the stables for two months now.

I offered the captain a small gold coin and asked, Will this cover his expenses?

Without hesitating even a few seconds, he took the coin and said, He's yours.

Later that night, in a room high up in one of the towers, I lay on my bed and thought back to my training and original joining with my animal companions.

At nineteen years of age, I had spent ten years studying at The Centre, a place far down the space-time contour from my original home in 12th Century Galicia. They told me that my high intelligence and personality type had made me an ideal candidate for their program. Genetic alterations were made to create my telepathic connection with enhanced animals. The three of us formed a collective intelligence, sharing thoughts and experiences. This expanded my sensorium to include everything that my two partners perceived. Both Maddie and Kate were improved versions of their species. The changes to their genome would be passed down to their offspring.

The McKenzie Academy and the advanced biological laboratory at The Centre existed for one purpose. That is to seek out and train young people with the requisite capacity to accept the various genetic changes that would give them skills beyond the norm. The Academy was a purely scientific institution that sought to better mankind by force-feeding the evolutionary process in the DNA of individuals recruited to become agents for The Centre.

Maddie was one of a select breeding group of bald eagles created to bond with us agents. They had been genetically changed to have much higher intelligence than usual. This included a more developed speech center in the brain to communicate with their human companions. Their life spans had been extended to approximate that of the humans of their day. Maddie was hatched in an incubator in my living quarters. She had imprinted with me immediately after coming out of her shell. Then I spent many weeks feeding her and caring for her. Our bond grew stronger as the days went on, and we learned to trust each other implicitly.

I learned how to mentally speak with her and how to see through her eyes. She could form words in her mind and could understand those I sent to her. Early on in our relationship, we took many long hikes in the rugged hills of Scotland. I would look through her eyes as she soared above me, and I would direct her attention at details on the ground that I wanted to examine more closely. As we spent time together, we improved our ability to work together to the point that it became a natural way to function.

Then one day, someone brought in a small puppy, black and white like Maddie's coloring. This was Kate, a modified breed of Husky. Her breed had been similarly changed to be more intelligent and to understand human speech, but with an enhanced sensory capability. Her sense of smell was modified to detect specific individuals and animals at over 200 meters. Her hearing was multiple times more acute than an average dog's. Her eyes had an extended range into the infrared that gave her an efficient type of night vision.

Kate joined us on our long hikes, though I ended up carrying Kate sometimes when she got worn out and needed a puppy nap.

With the changes to my genome, I learned to incorporate the overhead view and ground-level views of my two partners in my mind. This integrated sensorium was hard to manage at first. It took months of maturing and learning to integrate all of the information received from the two animals. It was hard work learning how to make it part of my situational awareness. However, it was worth all the demanding preparation because I could be in three places simultaneously. This helped me understand the entire environment of the moment and clearly communicate my needs to Maddie and Kate.

As we grew, we were put through rigorous training. We were pitted in games against squads of soldiers in the wilderness. We learned to live off the land and to travel from place to place in total secrecy. I began serious hunting, using modernized versions of weapons from my home era. I drew on the sensorium created by his partners Maddie and Kate to locate and kill the game needed to feed the three of us as we lived off the land.

Later, we were apprenticed to a large city police force to learn how to track down criminals and pursue gangs of kids who caused mischief. As we patrolled with my police partner, I observed the neighborhood from various perches high above the streets and hidden deep in the alleys' dark recesses. Based on these observations, I would communicate with the police officers to catch those running away from an officer in the city or hiding in a wilderness park's bushes.

Chapter 2: A Walk Along the City Walls

Julieta de Tornadizos de Ávila

Spring passes, and one remembers one's innocence. However, I wonder if I was ever really innocent. I am called Julieta de Tornadizos de Ávila, the daughter of Raul de Tornadizos. I grew up in the ancient palace owned by my grandparents inside the protective walls of Ávila and in our manor house in the nearby village of Tornadizos. Tornadizos was our country home, the central point of our productive farmlands and open-pit iron mining enterprise. The oldest of my brothers lives there now, managing the family's commercial and agricultural affairs, which he will eventually inherit when my father passes away. However, I am certain that will be an event far in the future.

I had been living in Toledo for three years when I first met Jon de Golada, a recent arrival in Alfonso VIII's capital city. My father sent me to live here because I have visions of the miraculous Virgin, where she sweeps me up to heaven for a few days. That is what my maid Isabel and some of her friends believe; my perception of these events never lives up to the expectations of the faithful. For years now, I know that I seem to disappear and then return on the third day. This has occurred many times during my short life, but I have absolutely no recollection of being swept up to heaven to commune with the Mother of Christ.

These incidents led my parents to put me in the nuns' care at the Convento de Santa Clara, here in Toledo. For decades now, this convent has served as a refuge for widowed noblewomen. Their home estates were now managed by their sons, who had families of their own. It has been a convenient place for the sons to put their mothers far from potential conflicts with their daughters-in-law. Such is the sad lot of the mature woman married off as a teen to an older nobleman. She is in the prime of her life but too old to remarry one of the few eligible bachelors who have so many younger women to choose from. So, she ends up in a luxurious apartment in a convent, far from the home she created with her husband.

Here in the convent, they have sizable apartments located in shaded cloisters surrounding attractive gardens with fountains, shade trees,  and loads of flowers. Their meals are catered by the excellent cooks in the convent's kitchen, and their personal maids live in smaller rooms right next door. Musicians, acrobats, and puppeteers provide weekly entertainment. The pitchers of wine are kept filled in their rooms, and a senior priest from the archbishop's palace holds Mass twice daily in the chapel. These forgotten women want for nothing except the company of their children and grandchildren.

I came here, not as a widow, but as a spiritual patient of sorts. My maid from Ávila, Isabel, accompanied me at the insistence of my father. He chose Isabel for this service because she was comfortable with the odd happenings in my life. Isabel is very religious, taking Mass at least once a day in the convent's beautiful chapel with the nuns. She also accompanies me to the local Church, La Iglesia de San Vicente, where I go to pray at a beautiful shrine to the Virgin.

I pray in the small side chapels of churches and at local shrines because I have always done so. I feel comfortable kneeling before a small altar and pour my heart out to one saint or another. I have much to talk about with them, many doubts, and many concerns for my life. Even though I doubt Isabel's version of events during my disappearances, she is convinced that I go to commune with the Virgin. I have told her many times that I have never seen the Virgin when I disappear, but she assures me that my lack of memory about them is because the Virgin is not ready to reveal her message.

On this day, the same day Jon was riding to Toledo, I took a walk along the top of a city wall section. From there I could see a picturesque countryside filled with farms and forested spaces. I loved walking up there for the calming effect it had on my spirit. When I did not return to my rooms that afternoon, Isabel knew that I had been borne away to commune with the Virgin and the Holy Spirit. I returned three days later, and Isabel acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Most of my disappearances occurred in that manner with no one the wiser except Isabel and the Mother Superior, Sister Clair.

From my perspective, I had simply experienced a brief dream-like episode, similar to many other episodes in my life. On this occasion, as I stood on the wall, the view suddenly changed, as if I had blinked from one image to a different one. I was shifted from one reality to another instantly and for no apparent reason. The farms and fields of the countryside looked quite different.  As I turned my head, I noticed that the old Roman coliseum and adjacent circus were in pristine condition instead of the ruins I was accustomed to. They were undamaged by time and complete in all their former glory. Inside the city walls, I saw a massive white marble temple with fine columns supporting a lofty roof. This extraordinary temple was located in the exact elevated location in the middle of the city where the archbishop's Church exists in my own existence.

I worried about the manner that I had been taken backward in time. How could this have happened? I was mystified. This had to be an ancient version of Toledo called Toletum by the Romans. I had learned this from my Latin tutor when we read accounts of the ancient times of Rome rule. Toletum had been taken from a Celtic tribe, and the lands had been given over to those soldiers who survived long enough to retire. Such retirement was funded by awarding them with farmland, houses, and slaves. These men married local women, raised families, and created a Roman society here.

Latin became the language of the land, and the Celtic tribes were either conquered or forced to move further and further to the Northwest. Many Celts did not move across to the sea to Britannia, Caledonia, and Hibernia. Those who stayed were eventually subjugated by the Romans, who called their land Gallaecia, which we now call Galicia, Northern Portugal, Asturias, and Leon.

I think this time period was what I had come across during this vision, but it mystified me that day. I wandered the walls for a while, puzzling over the magical spell that brought me to this place. I knew witches lived among us, even though the padres insisted that the Church had destroyed them all.  Had one of them put a wandering spell on me? Why was this happening to me?

I encountered no one along the wall that morning, finally coming to a place where I could look down on a man standing in front of a large crowd announcing something in a booming voice. His speech sounded very archaic, like the Latin priests used in the Mass. I struggled to remember enough of that language to make out what he was saying. It seemed like he was announcing a series of proclamations from their ruler. As I stood there, listening to his mundane declarations, everything shifted again, and I saw the city as it usually appeared to me.

As I walked back to the convent, I knew that even though I had experienced a relatively short time in that other place, much more time had passed here in the place where I lived. I knew that Isabel would ask me yet again if the Virgin had imparted her message to me. As I walked, I tried to make sense of the movement in time I had experienced. Still, nothing made sense to me. It seemed that these encounters with the unknown took me to random places and random times without any plan behind it all.

Chapter 3: An Arbitrator’s Work

Jon de Golada

My calling as an Arbitrator was essential, given my home century's level of technology compared to that of the far future era. I arrived here, back in the Century, where I was born and lived as a child by using the expertise of scientists who were born centuries after my birth. From my perspective, here in the 13th Century, the very existence of those scientists was potential in nature. They may become a reality, centuries from now, if I do my job effectively by guarding the General Timeline's flow.

Historians have always had many questions about the details of critical events or turning points in human progress. Epidemiologists needed samples of pathogens from ancient pandemics. Climate scientists wanted to explore climate changes that had occurred millennia ago. Arbitrators, such as I, are tasked to observe these researchers and note any accidental changes they cause in historical events. Our job is to mitigate these changes because they might have effects downstream towards their future. The ability to observe the historical past had become a crucial area of research for many academics.

Some of my fellow arbitrators had encountered unusual changes. Working in other locations along the Timeline,  they had uncovered evidence of a group of unknown individuals traveling to the past. These individuals are not registered with any research institution, making us doubt their benign intent. We do not know their intentions, so we need to observe them and prevent them from changing history's general course. They may be living in the past to make changes that would benefit themselves in the far future. However, even if they were just pretending to be time tourists, their actions could significantly change the General Timeline. My job is to monitor those present in the 12th and 13th Centuries in the Iberian Peninsula and nearby areas. If needed, I would have to influence other changes that would lessen their historical meddling.

In the earliest years of time travel research, the equipment had been bulky. It required a large power source, an extensive campus of buildings, and a wide assortment of specialized surveillance equipment. The details of the technology had been kept secret. Over time, widespread understanding of the theories and expertise of space-time displacement grew in the scientific community.

Then came the miniaturization of the equipment, which led to the establishment of multiple laboratories for viewing the past using small drones resembling birds or insects. This cautious approach included burrowing through space-time using a very thin space-time tunnel and sending through the miniature sensing devices. These autonomous devices would secretly record actual events as they occurred. Then they would return with the data that the investigators were interested in. After that, historians could compare those recordings with the historical records.

It was theorized that even this system of covertly spying on the past could cause small changes to the General Timeline. That was an old argument for philosophers and physicists. The minutiae of everything that has occurred in the past has never been recorded. Many scientists doubt that small changes to those events would cause any significant alterations to history. This means that our work was focused on the larger events of history. Arbitrators have been tasked with guarding against significant alterations that would shift the general direction of the past.

We assumed that since very ancient events had few such records, it would be difficult to discern potential changes that might be occurring prior to the invention of farming and the establishment of the first city-states. However, the records of more recent periods can be examined in detail, looking for discrepancies that might have happened due to our outside observations. The jury was still out on this issue, but it was commonly assumed that sending people back through the portals could cause divergence from the widely accepted course of events.

However, the genie was out of the bottle. As the knowledge of the process for time travel became more widespread, no one would be able to control who went back in time, where they went, nor what they did back there. This created the need for Arbitrators. We were trained to understand how divergences from the General Timeline could be sparked by Travelers' actions. We Arbitrators also needed tools to alleviate these inconsistencies and correct them at the very start.

That was the reason for my recruitment. The Centre has been identifying individuals from specifically targeted eras and bringing them into The Centre. Once there, we are trained and equipped to go back to our original homes and live out our lives back in the past, which we have always understood to be our present. There we work within the structures of our societies to preserve the important events of history.

Someone has to make a judgment call about creeping historical discrepancies, a judge of sorts. If things get out of hand, and someone is changing significant parts of our history, they have to be stopped, and things have to be put right. That is why Arbitrators are recruited from among the people of their period to fit in well with society, a powerful force for good, hidden in plain sight.

That night, at the castle,