The Imbalance

“What happened? This rig isn’t supposed to fall for another millennia!” Time Jockey* Maji El'yot, TJ-504Z3, was running against a hoard of people, shouldering her way through them in their screaming panic. The walls were humming with broken currents of electricity, popping conduits and frying fuses that made the lights flicker on and off for unknown amounts of time, if they came back on at all. The people were avoiding the walls as if they might jump out and bite them. She kept getting elbowed into the wall on the left (her right) of the hoard as she jogged through the thin space between metal and flesh. Maji also looked like she was talking to herself, but most of the moving bodies were too busy to notice.

“The Collective* is working on it, just get to the pod Maji!” This came from TJ-708D2, better known as Sara Rifaleaux, who couldn't be seen except by Maji on account of Sara not actually being present in this time-stream*, merely waking* through. She was like a conscious apparition synchronisticially harmonizing with TJ Maji's conscious reality.

To Maji El'yot, Sara also appeared to be waking through other streams, and looked not unlike a ghostly human spider with uncountable limbs moving about in different tasks. Each... overlay... of Sara's visual presence was a little less defined and more transparent the further from this stream that sliver of Sara’s consciousness was. It was not unlike seeing the wake behind a boat, Maji could see how Sara-boat moved, but nothing beyond those movements to show her what was in the other Time-Streams. It was trippy, but she was used to it, and snapped back at her non-physically present friend. “I’m going! I know you see I’m going!”

"The pod," according to TC, was not on the evacuation schematics, it was an emergency pod that was built for testing, before the Inhabitants* decided to move the pods to another location during construction. Technically, Maji was not on the station’s manifest since she didn't exist in this time-stream until she became present in it; she would not be able to get scanned into a standard evacuation pod, and that's why she had to run against the current of people to the other side of the station. “Doesn’t this change the mission?” She was asking Sara as she rounded a corner and almost collided with a girl-child.

Maji's heart sank; none of them were supposed to die like this, but not all of them would make it to the pods, this child included. Maji could sense the ripples as they were happening. The future was like a dream behind her eyes in almost nineteen full second intervals that weren't very pretty. For a moment, that seemed longer than it was, the Time Jockey wondered if the little girl was experiencing Infinite Conscious Imbalanced Memories (ICIM*, said like "ik-m").

The idea of this little girl, who was looking at Maji for recuse, remembering more positive events not happening for her, while here and now she’s forced to die afraid, wasn’t just heart-breaking it was soul-crushing. How does a TJ justify saving one among the thousands in this moment of the stream, never mind the off-shoots that flow from it? She didn’t. Maji’s job wasn’t to save any of one them, but to correct the imbalance to save all of them, and their variations. She kept moving and didn’t look back, feeling for the "old soul" sensation the little girl's other selves would feel themselves becoming with the unknown weight of experiencing death so young.

“The Collective is working on it.” That was all Sara finally said, she had waited for Maji to pass the child before pointing the way to the pod to change the subject just as quickly. TC didn’t like to admit ignorance about anything so, they neglected to provide the requested information by providing repeat information instead. “Into this storage room, behind the shelves with the cleaners on it, there’s a door to the test-pod bay. Readings show it still has atmosphere but we don’t know for how long.”

Dismissing the girl-child from her mind, TJ El'yot went inside the storage closet and identified the shelving. It took the her a moment to find the best way to move the whole shelf out of her way. At five-foot eight, she wasn’t exactly small, especially when one took into account the very voluptuous form adding padding to her toned body, hidden beneath her flight suit tucked into calf-high gravity boots that gave her two more inches.  Maji El'yot was stronger than she looked.

She looked like any other pilot on board, except to every other pilot on board. Her hair wasn’t quite regulation, being an uncustomary and very vibrant ginger-red, nevermind they didn’t actually have a ship with a pilot’s chair that would accommodate her womanly hips. While Maji was every bit as human as they were, she was also more evolved than the Inhabs were, and that didn’t change when she was in a Time Swim*. The differences were subtle, and easily dismissed.

Her eyes slightly bigger than theirs, her amber irises taking up more of the white because her pupils had a broader spectrum of dilation and contraction, and unlike some of the other Jockey’s, Maji El'yot had been bread for the five-finger time-streams. Surprising to most five-fingered humans, not all the time-streams of humanity evolved with only five fingers, many of them had six naturally, or seven, and other TJs were bred to manage those streams, though cross-overs weren't unheard of in a pinch. Sometimes, Maji envied the Sixes*, as she found their hands to be very elegant and even, but her measly five fingers managed the shelving rather easily, wrenching it aside once she figured out which bolts were more warn out.

The door behind it was air locked, and had a wheel lock that probably hadn’t been opened since it was shut over a hundred years ago. “I’m not going to catch a break am I?” Maji protested, not giving Sara time to chastise her or insist she "get to the pod", holding up one hand, palm toward the woman in the gesture of silence*, she looked about for something to use for leverage. 

While this storage closet didn’t seem to have any pry bars lying about, its cleaning tools were at least made of metal, and not wood. She tested the mop, the broom, and the vacuum before she discovered the poor machine that did the difficult vacuuming also had the strongest piece of metal connected to it. A segmented arm with very sturdy locking mechanisms that apparently allowed it to change and hold its shape around difficult objects to reach around, and it was exactly what she needed.

It was silly to feel for a machine like she felt for the girl-child, she knew, but being connected to slivers of infinity all the time, Maji couldn’t help but to acknowledge the same stuff was in the machine, that was in her. Its configuration allowed it to function for its purpose as much as hers. Even so, she apologetically fished out a handheld welding torch to burn off the piping in its straight locked position. Knowing from experience and with the scars to prove it, she remembered this time to protect her palms from the heat with a towel, and she tried not to consider the cleanliness of it in the process.

After only forty-three point two seconds of blissful quiet (ignoring the groaning metallic death-whines of the exploding station in descent) Sara chimed in, not any help, “You’re going to hit Earth’s atmosphere in less than three sinutes*, you do not want to be on that station when-“

Dryly, Maji cut Sara off even as she finished cutting her leverage off the vacuum cleaner: “I know, I know; burning ball of collapsing, ripping, shredded, exploding d e a t h.” Dropping her torch on the ground to let it cool, intending on kicking it through the hatch to save time, Maji took a moment to brush her stray hairs back against her seven level braid that was every bit a French braid, except in seven segments of her waist length hair, the end of which was wound up and pinned over her suit collar. It was not as neat as when she’d first done it. 

Maji was hot, and the nape of her neck was damp beneath her braided bun, but she resisted the urge to also touch it. The door was more important and the bar was cool enough to put her hands on. Sara had gone quiet again, Maji knew the other woman had long ago tired of wondering how she could be so casual about her own death.

Struggling to get the wheel to budge, she'd stopped thinking about it and really wished Sara would manifest physically to help her, instead of waking like an impatient supervisor. Sara didn’t have actual authority over Maji, but she was there for support so, her council was always taken into consideration… when it had merit.

“Put your back into it!” Sara was enthusiastically encouraging.

Maji ignored her, counting down the current seconds while she watched her own future unfold in those nearly 19 full seconds, ahead of when it did happen. The TJ wasn’t always watching in TC-time while experiencing current-time, but when she did, it was like having a full on vividly realistic dream with all the sensations of it actually happening, while the present time is also actually happening, full of sensations. TJs called it Sinute Effect*.

Maji imagined it wasn't unlike feeling these Inhab's Déjà vu, except instead of feeling like she’s done this thing she’s doing now, she feels like she’s already done the thing she’s going to do while she’s doing what she’s doing now. Shaking off the sinute effect, Maji re-doubled her efforts as she’d sensed she would, and the stupid wheel finally budged with a great scream of scraping metal.

“Shiit, did anyone hear that?” Maji asked, not stopping the squeaky turning of the wheel as fast as she could make it move, trusting Sara to wake into the hall and make sure no one was suddenly interested in the supply closet. TJ El'yot couldn’t afford to be stopped and questioned. By her count, she had 70 seconds to get in the room and into the pod, and she could only glimpse about 19 seconds ahead so, she wasn’t yet sure if she was going to make it!

To add stress and complications, Maji felt they'd entered a newly-created break from the original time-stream, a whole new time-stream that would have to be cataloged and calculated for its ripple effect in other streams. If Maji were looking at it now, she imagined she’d be seeing a delta of new streams reaching out through the ocean of time, all of them affected by this break. The Imbalance she was here to correct, but every imbalance was different, and so was the method of fixing it and the plan to stop the the Imbalance before it happened; which went right out the proverbial window when a bomb blew away a third of the station and sent it careening toward the Earth's atmosphere. 

Maji was back to making it up as she went; the TJ way.

“You're clear. 69 seconds to impact, get your arse in there, Maji!” Sara confirmed and attempted to get the Time Jockey moving faster through her current time.

Maji didn’t chastise Sara, it was helpful just knowing she wasn’t navigating this time-stream alone. Time Swimming was all she ever knew, existing in various streams on the whim of a baby consciousness before she was old enough to start training and honed her ability to choose when and where to be, and also how long she stayed. TJ El’yot couldn’t fathom being an Inhab, like those running for the pods on the other side of the ship. Only being aware of this time-stream, and only as its happening, how frightening! How could they decide anything with confidence?

The door wretched open and the stale air inside whooshed out into the store room with enough force to flap the fabric of her flight suit, even as she tried to push through it so as not to waste a moments time. She hadn’t noticed her skin had broken out in a light sheen of sweat until the icy air caressed it like a death-promise if she didn’t hump-it. 

As soon as the air was thin enough to move through with any speed, she ran toward the very obvious airlock separating the pod’s launch tube from the rest of the... well, starkly empty room. They’d stripped it of everything! “Where are the bloody controls?!” The question was growled as she stooped in her run to snag her cooled torch, pocketing it even as she flickered her mind to the future for answers.

Maji felt panicked as she reached the unmarked door frame, but then saw the next nineteen seconds and slammed her fingers into the pattern she’d witnessed. As a veteran Time Jockey, El’oyt didn’t need to know the code or where to tap it against apparently flush and similarly unmarked data pad within the frame, because she knew she already knew it in the same way she knew everything; she was conscious of its existence and simply believed the knowledge was available to her, and it was. These Inhabs would have called it a kind of grandfather paradox, and again, she was unjustifiably proud of them for having language to describe parts of infinite experience.

While Maji had never stopped long enough to contemplate just how far her beliefs could take her, except in the moments she needed to do her job, it was the engine that made her Time Swim possible. With the airlock opened, she stepped inside, counting down in her mind as she closed the hatch behind her. It seemed like it took forever to get the wheel to stop it’s turning in a full lock. Maji thought it would be stupid to screw things up because she forgot to pressurize the launch tube by sealing the door. 

Then, she was sprinting to the next hatch, the one into the pod that also needed to be wheeled open and then closed so, that’s what TJ El’yot did, without even thinking about it.

As she spun the time-sealed (thankfully) greasy wheel with ease to open it, Maji realized who ever designed the damned thing, like the pilot’s chairs, did not consider a woman as shapely as her! Outraged, she kept eyeing the circular door and wriggling her hips in her flight-suit, nervous they weren’t going to fit anymore than her bosom, and forcing her mind to see that it did in sinute effect. The hatch opened, she was still counting; Thirty-two…

"Get in the pod, Maji!" Sara's tone suggested she didn't know why there was a moments pause.

Get in the pod, Maji! The TJ shouted at herself mentally at the same time as Sara, feeling her split-second hesitation in realizing she wasn’t going to get strapped in, and she was about to be in pain. On an impulse riding the future seconds she was suddenly experiencing in sinute effect again, Maji’s hands gripped the ladder bar on the top of the hatch hole as it was oriented with her standing. Without another hesitation, she jumped up like an acrobat to curl her legs up and then swing her legs in, boots first. Thirty-one…

Her toes were pointed as well as she could in the sturdy tech-boots, to keep her body aligned with the relative ceiling-climbing ladder that would keep her oriented, for the seats inside the pod at the bottom of the ladder. Three seats. Thirty seconds…

It wasn’t encouraging. With a hard pull of the hatch and a jerk of the wheel, Maji sealed the pod door a micro second before she was plastered to it roughly in the sudden ejection of the pod; twenty-eight…

Less than 30 seconds before the station hit the atmosphere of Earth, and would break apart in more massive explosions, Maji’s pod was rocketing through the atmosphere in a shaky ride of a hurtling elevator-sized bullet. To say that it was difficult to get off the wheel, praying she didn’t turn in such a way as to loosen the seal while her belly was folded over it and her face plastered to the curve of the pod’s proper ceiling, would be an understatement. Twenty-six…

That pain, she began to sense, wasn’t going to compare to the pain she’d feel when the station hit atmosphere just behind them. At a presently increasing relative rate, since its mass was larger and being pulled more strongly by gravity to exceed the ejection of the pod’s velocity to its current speed, it would overcome the pod in more than one time-stream, but not this one. Twenty-two…

The sinute effect was used to see her possible futures, and none of her options got her to one of the seats before the fireworks hit so she had to choose the one with the least injuries. Some bruises and abrasions all over her body, but nothing broken; seemed like a win to TJ El’yot. Again she was reminded of the Inhabs who didn’t have the benefit of invoking the sinute effect and simply had to make decisions blindly. Eighteen …

Not looking forward to her immediate future, Maji didn’t drag her proverbial feet to prevent it, she already knew it happened and chose to experience her best version of it as she held the wheel in a steady lock with one hand, and reaching with the other to calibrate her grav-boots. The ship was brushing against the outermost atmosphere. She could feel as much as hear the thunder that roared through the particles suddenly displaced by it with fiction-heavy force. It wasn’t that time was moving any faster as she counted down; Ten…

Rather, there was simply less time between impact as each moment that past and the rate of fall increased, speeding through that moment. Her only aim was to get to the ladder for the initial impact, after that, all hell was going to break loose. Her boots immediate displacement of the pull of gravity on her body, making her feel heavy but mobile, was a relief. Maji could breathe again, and held the door locked as she turned her body to the ladder and climbed on. Three… Two… One…

Inside the pod, she didn’t see any of it, but the explosions of the disintegrating station rocked the pod into a hard tumble that immediately turned the Time-Jocky into a human laundry load inside the pod after flinging her off the ladder. Sara was helpless to help, watching in her wake as Maji got banged around by the pod’s rough rotation while it hurtled like a walk-in-closet sized missile toward Earth.

Unaffected by the physical reality Maji was experiencing, Sara was watching from one of the seats without actually being strapped into it. The Time Swimmer struggled to hold on to something long enough to spin with the pod. The jolting force was sickening. It was disorienting. All she could do was reach, trying not to think about how many times she passed through Sara as her hands grasped and slipped on the seats in an effort to grab a strap.

Maji could have calculated how long it took her, but she didn’t want to, she was just delighted when she felt the near socket-popping jerk of her solid grip on a seat strap that gut-punched her as she plastered along the head-rest. If she hadn’t had one too many rides like this one, Maji would have lost her dinner right then. Instead, she squirmed and maneuvered her wide hips into the narrow seat and pulled the shoulder straps over her shoulders to combine them across her center. At their widest, they almost didn't fit over her breasts.

As she began to feel the ease of pain and the comfort of a constant pressure in being in the right position, she joined the lower straps between her thighs into the locking mechanism with trembling fingers. Maji was still acclimating to the g-forces of their fall, and spin. It wasn't like any one fall is exactly like any other!

In those first moments following the impact of the station’s atmospheric entry, the pod was bumped and jostled so heavily she couldn’t tell if the spin in their fall had gotten faster or slower, or in what direction they were falling. “Help me out here, Sara... I don’t see any controls, how exactly do I secure a safe landing?”

Maji should have known it was out of her hands. One of the most difficult things to come to terms with for a TJ, sometimes, you just have to experience it; whatever “it” is. Physically manifested as she was, Maji could die as surely as she was bleeding and bruised from being knocked around. 

It was only another eight seconds of major turbulence, but it felt like an eternity of silence from Sara while she contemplated the best language to communicate how fucked Maji was. Get in the pod, she said…Maji thought bitterly. Sure, she could simply pop out of existence here, and re-pop into existence safely on the ground, but the nuances of an existing time-stream can only be truly understood and appreciated when experiencing them. If she simply Swam to another point and space in this time-stream, she’d miss every little nuance of the flow in between. It would be like missing the audio for a portion of a new Hollywood film, she might know what was happening in that time, but she’d miss everything the experience could tell her with her senses. Maji had to ride it out, whatever her fate.

Sara finally found the words but still hesitated to explain, “The Pod’s design was meant to be target-launched from the station, but since the station was in freefall, your trajectory was simply the path the tube was pointed in. Unfortunately, the blast has-“

The Time Jocky knew her waking friend was stalling, “Spit it out, already!”

The other woman sighed in irritation and tiredness. “At your current descent, the 'chute will deploy in… seven sinutes, and you’ll land on top of a parking garage in a city the Inhabs call Cin-ci’nnati. The Collective is working on your new mission, but until the details are confirmed, you are to remain in-swim to provide recon.” Sara, nor Maji knew that zone would be enveloped in an electro-magnetic field that would disrupt the parachute's deployment, and Maji would die. Infinity is a lot to keep track of.

“TJ-504Z3 confirmed.” Maji’s standard reply with her designation was an absent thought said aloud like a reflex. While she knew waking didn’t provide the same level of insight as a Time Swim, she also wasn’t looking forward to swimming blind and without a clear objective. Find the cause of the imbalance, she reminded herself, it was almost always a person making a conscious decision to create a new stream of reality shared by others. 

Getting used to the tumble and falling sensation, Maji felt the shift of the pod in an unknown turbulence, and had no idea it was another Time-Swimmer altering her trajectory and saving her life. To her, it was just a rough bump of air and she was none the wiser as to why, by whom, or where she was now headed. If Sara had noticed, she was distracted by the way Maji attempted to use the strange turbulence to coax her from a wake to a Time Swim with her. “C’mon, it’s a rush! It’s as close as we’ll ever get to the thrill of an Inhab's life!” Maji exclaimed in over-acted joy.

Instead, she found herself clutching and tugging at her harness as if she suddenly felt the dooming impact that she narrowly escaped while Sara shook her head with a Wiley grin. Sara didn't do field work, not that she couldn't, but she wouldn't. Sara preferred to be a medium of information, Maji preferred to be in the action! TC worked with the TJs strengths.

TJ El'yot was forced by Sara’s silence, and her blurring ghostly image projecting each of her waking consciousnesses like visual versions of herself overlapping the same gesture of dismissal, to reserve herself to the fact Sara was willing to aid but not join her. Maji was still hot in her flight suit, and the form-fitting grey cotton boxers with matching ribbed wife-beater she wore under it; a bra had always made her feel caged and unable to breath so she’d simply neglected to ever wear one.

With nothing but time, Maji’s thighs swayed in her suit, as her toes wiggled in her socks snugly kissing her naturally brown skin in the grip of her grav boots. She had gadgets (aside from the hand welder) and weapons in her pockets but in truth, she could time-swim naked if she wanted to, it was just more convenient to be clothed for the time, and prepared for what she was getting into.

Maji could see Sara making expressions and blurring in movements she wasn't actually making in this time-stream, despite not actively communicating. It was calming. Maji wasn't alone. This fall wasn't the only thing happening. In another off-shoot of the imbalance, she was already dead when the pod malfunctioned and exploded, only for what was left of it to be obliterated by the falling Station bits. Yes, seeing the multi-wake of Sara’s consciousness observing at least a dozen other streams, reminded TJ El’yot that experience and time were infinitely more complex than the singular experience she was swimming in.

The red-head took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and wiggled her hips to snuggle her overflowing bottom into the vibration of the pod's friction through the air. Sara was busy so, Maji decided to be busy too. It wasn’t like she could do anything; she was just along for the ride at this point, praying a heavier piece of the station didn’t catch her in a future she hadn’t seen yet. Those extra 19 perceived seconds she gained in sinuate effect  would be the only thing between her demise and finding, and believing in, the version of herself that narrowly escapes. 

There were TJs who got stuck in impossible streams, dying in a place and time they weren’t born in, but it was rare, and she’d never known one. TJs had TC, and as Sara had said, they were working on it.

A further part of Maji’s thighs allowed her to feel the vibrations through her excited lady petals in a partial bloom of arousal and position. She leaned into it with a slight grind of her hips, and a cheeky grin on her lips, as she got to work distracting herself too. She'd never met anyone who'd never pleasured themselves, but she did know most TJs had heard or were spreading half-truth rumors about how willing she is to enjoy a moment. The way her briefs quickly became squishy, and her body pulsed with a warm wave of tingling heat that made her feel tighter and more open at the same time, probably wouldn't help her modest-cause at all. Still, Maji was enjoying the moment.

She was enjoying it so much, she’d almost forgot that she was hurtling to the ground in a pod no bigger than a shed. She DID forget that Sarah, the other woman waking through this time-stream, was still able to see her as clearly as Maji had been seeing Sara when her own honey-ambered eyes were open. The Time Jockey was fisting her straps over her breasts so they rubbed mercilessly against her hardened nipples, vibrating with the shaking of the pod like it was designed for her pleasure and not her safety. She was too indulgent and she knew it, but what else could she do? The pod didn’t even have windows!

Sara dryly piped into Maji’s self-pleasure and said "you're disgusting..." but when TJ El’yot’s eyes blinked open, Sara was grinning too.

Maji laughed aloud and shrugged sheepishly in her hot blush, immediately stopping her ride of the humming pod she was descending not so gracefully in, waiting for a tug (with thoughts of riding it) of the parachute opening since she'd lost count, but she was pretty sure they were approaching seven sinutes by now.

Sara shook her head at Maji, but Maji just wished for the fall to be over, and she really wished someone had put a damn window in the pod design. She had no idea if it was dry or wet outside, just that she was spinning in the pod’s rapid descent through the clouds. With only nineteen seconds of immediate future to contemplate before she experiences it, Maji would have to wait until they were closer to land to know for sure if the weather would be worth getting a bikini out. Solar days were something to get adjusted to; the segments of time seemed so much larger when stretched out in a line that way.

TJ El'yot would be lying if she didn't admit she'd broken regulations to sun bathe, on more than one occasions.

Hollywood was largely noted for excluding the times when there's not explosive popping or sparks going off in the cabin, and there really isn't anything to distract an occupant from how boring, and yet scary, falling is; especially from such a high distance you had to go through upper atmosphere first. It was endless waiting for the unknown to happen, and again, Maji wondered if that was what it was like for the Inhabs all the time…

"What were you even doing?" Sarah asked to break the silent and shake-still tension.

"Huh?" Maji asked, having already forgotten about it, then remembering by the look Sara gave her as she laughed again, TJ El’yot tugged on her harness before she could manage a worthy verbal answer. The straps would catch, as soon as the parachute deployed, it'd be a rollercoaster into a float to land-laid-heaven. Well, War would follow if the Collective was to be believed, but Maji wanted to think of the heaven in having the ground under her feet first. How long had it been?

To Sara, she finally explained in the only way she could; frankly. "If the parachute doesn't deploy, or gets tangled in the tumble of this pod when it does, I was kind of thinking it'd be nice to get off once more and maybe even ride the high into oblivious flaming death. You know?"

Sara laughed so hard she slipped out of the time-stream and Maji momentarily felt a panic at being completely alone and not having the other woman’s blurring motions to remind her this wasn't the only thing happening. It was like her heart stopped but raced forward at the same time, and despite the rocky descent, Maji felt suddenly motionless.

Sara came back a moment later, almost choking on her laughter, giving gos to Maji, as she apparently explained why she laughed in every waking and present stream she was in.

The red-head blushed so hotly she would have sworn her skin was as bright as her hair, hoping Sara wasn't around any TJs she knew. Even more than before, she wished there was a window in the pod, but it had apparently never made it anywhere near this particular time-stream. Invoking the sinute effect at this point was more stressing than waiting.

Just as Maji was thinking to ask Sara if TC had any news on her new mission, or for that matter, how the chute was supposed to know when to deploy, they were both startled by the jerk of the parachute top blowing, and an unseen force pushing the bottom down so they weren't tumbling anymore. That answered one question.

Maji barely had a moment to tug-test her harness once more, just to be sure, and take a breath she let out slowly before they were jerked so hard by the parachute deploying next, Sara blipped out again. Maji wasn't as scared this time, she felt the drop below her, and then the hard pull of salvation before the float of laziness to the ground which she knew now to be basking in sunlight of what the inhabs called a perfect afternoon. Even if the pod hit something solid, like a car on the top of the parking garage, Maji thought she should be okay.

Of course, She didn't know if Sarah would be back by then, or that she'd almost been as dead as she joked about being. There'd have been nothing to cushion Maji's fall upon an apparently unsuspecting concrete structure. That the 'chute opened at all meant she wasn't over the parking garage, but without looking through the sinute effect, Maji didn't know. Too happy the chute deployed, Maji wasn't obeying protocals, she was enjoying the afterglow of a death near-miss.

So instead, Maji felt a whumph of impact upon a distinctly giving liquid she took to be water. She was relieved and over-joyed, not giving one hoot about the wobble of the bounding ripples of the impact washing back beneath the pod as it floated upright. It was obviously not a parking garage, but she'd take it! The same hatch she’d climbed down into the pod, she now had to climb out of, and Sara was nowhere to be seen yet. Probably, Maji mused, because I now have more questions; like, why am I not on top of a parking garage?

Maji didn't wait for her; she'd find the TJ when she was ready to wake again. TJ El’yot unbuckled her harness, one button and all four straps slunk over her body and away, into the seat back she was still plastered against. If only it'd been that easy to put it on! She took a moment to glance into her future, to know as she was freeing herself from her strapping’s, that the pod was not immediately in danger of being squished by a piece of station-debris.

Her heart was racing because she didn't know what life was like out-there. Except a war that had seriously been changed by the destruction and fall of the Station she’d almost died in. Maji was not the only Time-Swimmer here obviously, but where she expected just one other, she would soon learn there were many others. Like a swarm to something catastrophic she couldn’t begin to fathom while the sinute effect only showed sunshine and silence with a 30% chance of overcast caused by flaming, smoking, falling former Orbital Station pieces.

Maji didn't know who was here, but she knew this time-stream was altering course, like a sudden shift in the currents of time that made every other time-stream shift slightly in accommodation to the change that unbalanced an already balanced symphony of infinity. It had to happen, because infinity demanded it, and therefore it was only natural that the notion of one to change their history should cause others to change time-streams simply because they can; and others still, like her, with the desire to maintain and restore the very confusing but very natural balance.

Whatever was on the other side of that hatch, TJ Maji El’yot had to face it, with or without Sara. Maji pushed herself from the form-fitting seat that absorbed most of her body's impact, and wiggled around her flight suit as soon as she was standing, to return the air-flow where the weight of the stuff in her pockets didn't keep molesting her.

Maji had opted out of cinched waist or a belt for the express purpose of NOT emphasizing her already overflowing natural sensuality. She was here to stop war, to finish a war and correct the time-streams current! She was not here to seduce unsuspecting men to her bed. Not that it hadn't happened, Maji reminded herself, in other time-swims; though she also had to consider who had been the seduced, and who the seducer…

TJ El’yot was grinning stupidly as she climbed the ladder to the hatch, without looking ahead in time, she hooked a knee around a rung to keep herself balanced while she unscrewed the airlock and nudged the hydraulic to take it up and open. She was not fully prepared for the blinding light that reached in to steam her skin and bake her through the hole it poured down in.

Maji felt like even her breath came dryly from her throat, as if the air in her lungs had become dehydrated even before she exhaled it out. The TJ was startled a moment later, when she drew her gasping breath of the warish air, tainted with a rusty metal flavor that was probably blood, but found it cooled in the shadow of a person peering in. It was not Sara.