The Silver Dream (InterWorld 2)

It wasn’t possible. Narrowing the search had only eliminated three thousand, fifty-five people? Every single other mention of Acacia Jones in the Altiverse was between fourteen and sixteen with black hair and violet eyes? More than four trillion of them?

I didn’t even know what to do next. Finally, at a loss, I asked which section contained the first thousand records.

Not all of them were Acacia, as roughly half of the stat sheets contained both a DOB and DOD. I wasn’t sure if I was comforted by this or not, although it did make things go a little faster once I narrowed the search to include only living organisms. Finally, after almost two hours of numbly flipping pages, one of the sheets included something new: an affiliation category, which listed the letters TW.

All the other stats on the sheet seemed to match up. Just to be sure, I flipped through a few more. The ones that seemed likely to be the Acacia I knew all also had the TW affiliation.

“Search organizations, initials: TW,” I told the catalog, after putting the census files away.

“Search complete. Number incalculable.” I should have seen that coming.

I tried several different searches, most of them based on the specific worlds which had mentioned Acacia Jones. I tried searching brane by brane, world by world. Some yielded actual numbers but nothing helpful. Half an hour later, I’d gotten nowhere but frustrated.

Too many landscapes, by far…even weeding out only the relatively few parallel worlds that contained consciousness—the ones without tended to self-destruct in big rips or cosmological inversions or, worst of all, time loops that consisted of a few seconds to a few millennia after each big bang, only to reset and start all over again. Even, as I said, not counting all the other worlds, which was a number guaranteed to give me and my descendants unto the umpteenth generation myopia and migraines, I still couldn’t make a dent in the pile in my lifetime.

Resisting the urge to pound my forehead against the screen and apply several of the juicier phrases and words I’d picked up from Jai’s unabridged, I instead closed my eyes and counted to ten. I only got to four before I found myself infuriated by the numbers. I was tired of numbers. There were too many freaking numbers.

I took a deep breath. How did you search for one thing that existed everywhere?

“Search organizations, initials: IW.”

“Search complete. Number incalculable.”

Wait a minute. InterWorld existed everywhere, didn’t it?

“Search organizations, name: InterWorld.”

“Search complete. One match.” The information came up on the screen, listing Joseph Harker as captain and some of the higher-level officers.

I felt myself on the verge of some sort of breakthrough, but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe I was just grasping at straws, but this train of thought seemed to be going somewhere. If I was searching for something that might exist everywhere—

Bingo.

“Search organizations, initials: TW. Location: Altiverse.”

“Search complete. One match.”

The information sheet came up on the screen—and then, like one of those infuriating game demos that made you pay money before you saw the whole thing, the screen dimmed and a message popped up: OFFICER CLEARANCE REQUIRED.

I obviously didn’t have officer clearance, nor was it likely I could get it. I’d spent the last several hours going through records, and for all my searching, I’d gotten one word.

One word, barely visible, nearly hidden behind that smug OFFICER CLEARANCE notice.

TimeWatch.

It wasn’t that I was snooping, I told myself for the hundredth time, so much as pursuing knowledge. That was a worthy cause, right? The Old Man always said to learn everything you could, because you never knew when one little piece of information could be important.

I doubted he would take that as a valid excuse if he found me going through his desk like this, but I was driven by a deep, gut-wrenching sense that this was important. I had to know.

After standing there with my nose pressed to the monitor for a few minutes, trying in vain to glean any more information on TimeWatch through the dimmed screen and large letters demanding clearance, I’d made my way back to the Old Man’s office, intent on asking him about it. Or asking for clearance. Or asking for temporary clearance for something completely unrelated and then using it to get information about TimeWatch. The latter had seemed to be my best option, but all plans had been

foiled when Josetta informed me that Captain Harker wasn’t in his office.

I’d agreed to wait, sinking into one of the surprisingly plush chairs opposite her desk, and had proceeded to work myself into a frenzy of speculation while she sat there calmly, filing papers.

Four trillion, seven billion, thirty-six million, nine thousand, seven hundred, and fifty-eight matches. The familiar voice of the computer kept running through my head: the same female voice that asked for identification in some doorways, informed us of routine schedule changes or to get ready for a warp, answered questions in the viewing room, and gave instructions in the port room. Being used to it didn’t make it any less maddening, especially when it was telling me I didn’t have clearance. This information could help me find out where Acacia had gone, if she was okay. I had to know.

After a while, Josetta had gotten up to use the lavatory. Before I even knew what I was doing I was in the Old Man’s office, opening one of his drawers. He had temporary clearance cards in there; I’d seen him give one to J/O before, which had rankled something awful at the time. They were one-shots, but it just might give me the boost I needed to find out what TimeWatch was.