"Doranna Durgin - Forward" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

Forward
by Doranna Durgin
I'm not dead!

Augie laughed. Right out loud, breaking the silence of the gleaming black walls and their deep nighttime
shadows. Loud and long and just possibly tinged with both hysteria and relief. I'm not dead! It was a lie!

All those years of propaganda and rules, turned to lies in a single bold moment.

The sudden voice of caution startled him to silence. It wasn't safe to hang around, not here in the deep
night of the future. Only a couple of hours, but still...

The forbidden Forward.

Boldness struck again. It didn't matter if anyone saw him here тАФ they'd get no more than a glimpse
before he hit his recall switch, and then they'd assume he'd come from their future, that he'd come Back.

For no one ever went Forward. To go Forward was supposedly fatal; to try to go Forward merited
swift, severe punishment. The asswipe Historians were sworn and trained and тАФ Augie suspected тАФ
brainwashed against it. So were those brown-nosing Techs. And of course the Supervisors. But...

Augie looked around the clean, dark lines of the pedestal-studded Ops room until his gaze landed on the
battered suction mop against the wall, the autosweeper and its portable control panel. His mop. His
sweeper.

The janitor who'd gone Forward.

***

He went Forward not just once, but repeatedly. Still not dead. First those few bold hours...then days.
He even wandered away from the travel pedestal, creeping around the closed Historical Research Center
Ops with impunity. He came to realize that the person most likely to spot him was...him.

By now, he looked forward to it, enough so that early evening found him smiling to himself, propped up
in a corner with cold black marble at his shoulders as he prodded the simple interface of the
autosweeper. The Techs had been messy of late; he needed to take two passes around the snugroom
tonight. And there'd still be time for travel, because he'd come back only a moment after he left.

"Augie, will you come to my office?"

Shit. Supervisor Tolan. And she looked grim. Surely she didn'tтАФ

No. If she knew, he'd be snatched up by security and marched off to a sterile, isolated cell for rough
questioning before they brain-wiped him. If they knew Forward travel wasn't fatal, they damn sure didn't
want anyone doing it тАФ that much was obvious. He had to stay hidden until he could go public in a big
way.

But even if she just suspected...

Augie pasted a subservient smile on his face, made sure the autosweeper was tucked out everyone's