Here And Now and Then

      

Here and Now and Then is a pretty nifty time travel story with a lot of heart. Kin Stewart is a time traveler- sent back from 2142 to prevent a time anomaly, but things go wrong and he ends up stranded in the early 21st. His retrieval beacon is damaged and he has no way home. So he does what any sensible time traveler would do in that situation- he adapts and adjusts to his new reality, eventually marrying and having a child. Eighteen years later someone comes from the future to retrieve him- but in 2142 it's only been a few weeks that he's been gone. Not eighteen years. 

Kin has no desire to go back- he barely remembers his previous life. A side effect of time travel is that he slowly loses his memories of his previous life- it's not entirely clear why but apparently the mind doesn't do well trying to process two timelines. The longer he's "here" the less he remembers of the future. He's happy too, married to Heather and raising his daughter Miranda. Life is good... until the future finds him again. 

Dragged back to 2142 against his will, Kin has to come to grips with the fact that he had a life there- and a fiance as well. Penny was the love of his life before he went back in time, but the problem now is that he can't find those feelings- he's in love with Heather now. And of course he's gutted by the fact that he'll never see his daughter again. When something happens though and he realizes that Miranda's future is in jeopardy, he has to make a decision. Does he let the past play out or does he save his daughter- any way he can? 

Like I said this story has a lot of heart. I really felt for Kin and the decisions he has to make, the pain he goes through. And Miranda is fabulous. She is such an inspiring character and an amazing young woman, but things don't go well for her after Kin disappears. Kin breaks the rules and looks in on her future- and what he finds is alarming. And yet there is seemingly no way he can intervene- to do so risks getting her terminated as a temporal anomaly. The time traveling authority considers Miranda a corruption of the timestream- after all, Kin wasn't supposed to marry Heather and even have a child! Her own existence is therefore a problem from their perspective. 

The horrifying part is you can kind of see their point. Kin wasn't supposed to marry and have a kid in the 21st, and the whole point of the time traveling authority is to prevent mistakes like this. On the other hand, if they're going to police the timestream and send agents back to change things or apprehend bad guys, they have to expect something like this will eventually happen. And even though Kin does some boneheaded things, I was totally pulling for him and Miranda to come out of this unscathed. 

The characters here are amazing. Kin and Miranda's relationship is beautiful, and Penny really shines as the story goes along. It would have been easy to lose her a bit in the shuffle, with all the permutations and time travel stuff, but she really comes into her own, and rather than just being a jealous bystander she becomes central to the plot. I loved that. And the Temporal Correction Bureau- the time travel authority in 2142- is awesome as a concept. Imagine buildings piercing the clouds and a facility where great holo screens stream data from the timestream, where different departments handle mission planning or retrieval, or monitor the past for deviations and errors. It's such a fun idea. 

There are a lot of amazing time travel stories being told right now, and I've read several good ones in a row. This one joins my list of favorites, and it's not because of the time travel shenanigans- although those are amazing- it's because of the feels. Seriously, this story moved me. What would you do to save your child if you were separated by over a century of time? If changes you make in the future affected how her life played out a hundred years ago? It's mind boggling stuff, but Mike Chen never loses the heart of the story- the love between a father and a daughter.