The first thing Danielle Wilson heard when she arrived for work, were the words of the Skylite Motel's desk clerk calling out "I'm glad you're here. I need you to check on 132. I'm worried about that guy. Find out if he is doing okay. The last time I saw him he looked even sicker than when he checked in. Maybe we should call an ambulance or somethin." The clerk, Jonah Thomas, was almost as new on the job as Danielle, and so both were doing their best to negotiate their first few weeks of employment. Jonah seemed alright. He had a wife and kid and so he needed the job pretty badly. A 'motivated employee' as they say. "I'm starting to think that this guy might have something more serious than Covid."

  "I'll check him out, Jonah, first thing," replied Danielle. Danielle was also motivated. She needed the job to generate some much needed spending money and paying for her college tuition was more expensive than she thought it would be. A month ago she had made the big decision to leave home and move in with her father, at his home in Pahrump, Nevada. Not that living with her mom had been that bad but it seemed time for a change when Aslan, her older brother decided to move back in with them. That, combined with the never ending dramas of her sister, Sylvia, meant that a move was probably a good idea. Danielle had just started her Early Childhood Education program at Great Basin College and could just as easily get to the college by riding the bus from her dad's place. He had a spare bedroom, and best of all, he spent half of his time on the road with his job. Freedom like that never happened at her mom's house and it would be awhile before Danielle could afford to rent a place of her own.

  Room 132: Danielle knocked gently. No response. There wasn't a 'Do Not Disturb' tag hanging from his doorknob, so Danielle knocked a bit harder. A few clunks and squeaks emanated from behind the wooden door. "Come in," The man's voice was getting weaker.

  Danielle opened the door and cautiously entered the room. Not much had changed since she had cleaned the room from the day before. No evidence of eating even. She wondered if the man had even left his bed since she last saw him. There was one strange thing though. His glasses had always looked a bit weird, like Google 'smart glasses' or something, but now they looked even weirder, with small coloured lights flickering on the lenses and arms of the glasses.

  "Danielle!" he said, speaking with some difficulty. She had told him her name the day before, when they were negotiating just how she should clean his room for him if he didn't want to go out somewhere. She finally convinced him to go for a walk in the park across the street from the motel. "I'm so glad to see you again. I'm afraid that I am in something of a predicament and I am going to need your assistance." The lights had stopped flashing on his glasses, but he really wasn't looking so good.

  "What can I do for you, sir?" She couldn't remember the name he had given her in the conversation from the day before. "Do you want to go for another walk in the park while I deal with your room today?"

  "No, I am afraid that is not going to be possible. I am experiencing considerable difficulties as the result of an accident I had recently." Danielle could see that he was considering carefully what to say next, possibly because the effort to speak was taxing him. Jonah was right. This guy really did need an ambulance. "Not exactly an accident, really, but my body is failing me, and so is my side in this struggle."

  Another crackpot. This motel seemed to attract them. Just another Saturday night in Pahrump. "What 'side' would you be referring to sir?" asked Danielle. This guy was starting to remind her a bit of her uncle Lou. Uncle Lou spent a lot of time researching on the Internet.

  "I must be brief, dear Danielle. Events have spiralled out of my control, and I have very little time. You are the only person that I can leave these to." He removed the glasses from his forehead and handed them towards Danielle from his sickbed, for that surely was what it had become. Maybe a better term might be 'deathbed' now that Danielle was able to give him a closer look. This guy was sick! He continued, "The few people I know in this time have all been killed. I am the only survivor from my mission group and I am not long for this world. Something significant has turned against the Arachnids, my faction. Something perhaps a decade or two ago. I am not sure, but this event has rendered my faction's ability to retrieve me," he was really struggling now, "useless."

  Danielle was starting to get really concerned about the man's health. She interrupted him. "Sir, I can see that you are in some serious pain there. Let me go to the office and call an ambulance. for you. I believe that you need to go to the hospital!"

  The man steeled himself and tried to sit a bit taller in the bed. "Of course, of course, you will need to do what you have to do, but that is not what is immediately important. These glasses are what matters. Do not let them fall into the wrong hands. Please show me your palm."

  Danielle definitely did not want to turn her palm towards the man, but for some reason she did. Was he controlling her mind? What was going on here? He pressed one lens of the glasses against her palm and a burst of light illuminated her skin for a moment. "And please look towards me while I do this."

  She tried her best to look away from the man, but to no avail. He scanned her retinas with the glasses. Surely that is what he did! What the hell? Then suddenly her free will returned and she cursed at the man.

  "I apologise profusely, but that had to be done. The glasses are now programmed to accept you, and no other. I hope that you will forgive me." That expenditure of energy seemed to be the tipping point for the man. He collapsed with his arm extended dropping the glasses on to the quilt.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Danielle knew what to do. She immediately ran off to tell Jonah to call the ambulance, grabbing the glasses as she left the room. Jonah called 911 and within minutes the ambulance pulled up in front of room 132. The attendants entered the room and did what they could, but very soon called the police because the man had died. Two squad cars of Nye County officers arrived soon after. What ensued was enormously stressful and troubling. Surely her worst day of work ever. So many people coming and going. The police did some investigating and took Danielle's phone number as well as Jonah's. One of the officers asked Danielle what she knew about the man, but for some reason she didn't say anything about the oddities she had observed. Why not? She wasn't sure. Above all she just wanted to get home and get away from all of the stress of this poor man's passing. And maybe check out those glasses a little more closely.

  ______________________________________________________________________

  Danielle's father was away in Reno, at a sales conference, and so she would have the whole house to herself, and she headed straight home after her chambermaid shift. She laid the glasses out on the table and prepared herself a quick meal. It was late, after 10:00 pm, and she should have been exhausted after her day at school and the tribulations at work, but she was just so extremely curious about those glasses. She was attached to them in some odd way, maybe even emotionally attached? What was going on here?

  Danielle decided to play it cautious though and put her Chromebook on the dinner table next to the strange glasses. There was no brand name present anywhere on the glasses. She called up images of "smart" glasses to compare with the pair given to her by the mysterious man. There were just no likely matches, nothing else looked like these ones. Maybe it was some new tech out of China? She couldn't even see a way to charge the glasses. No plug-ins of any kind seemed visible anywhere.

  In all of the talk following his passing she had learned his name, Ernest Remington, a resident of Santa Clara and said to be a sales representative and employee of General Foods. So she tried to Google search his name and identity. No luck again. None of the entries seemed to have anything to do with the man she had met and none of the images looked anything like him. Maybe she should try the glasses on?

  'Gulp!" thought Danielle. 'What had this Ernest said about these things? 'They were programmed to accept me?' What did that mean? And why didn't I give these things to the police and tell them about what the man had said? The police would have never believed such nonsense! Is that why, or maybe I am somehow unnaturally attached to these glasses. Am I becoming Gollum?'

  Danielle was realising that it was pretty quiet in her dad's house when he wasn't there. She stared at the glasses on the table. They were so very clean and smooth. Not a scratch or a smudge, despite the events of the day. It did not appear that there was any prescription to the lenses. She wondered what they would look like on her face, in the mirror. She wondered what her dad would say, when he saw her wearing them. Would they make her more or less attractive?

  What to do. It was eating her up. Why not? What could possibly go wrong? She put the glasses on. They fit absolutely perfectly. 'That's weird,' thought Danielle.

  She moved her head to glance at the clock. A feeling of intense nausea immediately overcame her. What was she seeing? It didn't seem to sync with her head movement.

  INTERFACE COMPLETED - IMAGE BUFFERING ENABLED.

  Where did that come from? She could see a read out on the bottom of her field of vision. The nausea subsided. She could also see the clock on the wall: 11:03 pm.

  HEADSET FEATURES PERFORMANCE SETTING: TRAINING LEVEL.

  DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED WITH TRAINING MODULE 1?

  The texts were rolling by at a comfortable reading pace.

  How to answer? Where was the keyboard? "Yes," she blurted out. Maybe that would do the trick.

  A video started to play in her field of vision. It was difficult to comprehend how, since there was no screen and Danielle retained some ability to see normally. She could see the walls of the kitchen, but at the same time watch the images in the video. How was this done? She removed her glasses and the video vanished. She returned them to her head and the images returned to view.

  "Welcome to Arachnid Time Agent training module number 1. This module is designed to prepare you to understand the history of the Time War and your role within it. As an agent of the Arachnid faction, your responsibility is to shape the course of history in favour of your people. You will carry out missions carefully selected by the Arachnid Time Management Authority located in the Central Desert of the North American continent, year 2428."

  The visual portion of the training module to this point had consisted of handsome and attractive looking young people dressed in ultramodern-looking clothing striding into adventurous looking natural surroundings. However, at the point where the 'Time Management Authority' was mentioned, the scene changed to a desert environment filled with industrial development for as far as the eye could see. There were even three nuclear reactors present in the view, connected by massive high voltage towers and cables to what Danielle imagined to be gargantuan AI data centres.

  "Largely unknown to the general public of our 2428 world, there is a global conflict ongoing, consisting of at least 4 factions fighting to steer the course of history in the favour of their own peoples. It is important to understand that it is not only the countries, territories, economies, resources, and well-being of the population that are at stake in this war. The very existence of you, your family and everyone you know can be erased from history with the completion of one simple alteration in the timeline! The Arachnid faction dedicates the entirety of its resources, to preserving our favourable timelines and historical events. We shall not fail, so long as individual members of our faction, such as yourself, work effectively as agents to protect the integrity of world history."

  At this point some song played, sung by a large elaborately dressed children's choir. It was obviously a national anthem of some sort, but none which Danielle had ever heard before.

  TRAINING MODULE 1 COMPLETE. DO YOU WISH TO RECEIVE A CURRENT TEMPORAL TIME STATUS UPDATE?

  "Yes," answered Danielle.

  TIMELINE FLOW IN THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT HAS REGAINED STABILITY, WITH THE RECENT INCURSIONS IN THE NEVADA REGION LARGELY RESOLVED. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL AGENTS INVOLVED IN THOSE OPERATIONS.

  "Was Agent Remington involved in one of those incursions?" asked Danielle.

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  "Do I need to be concerned?" asked Danielle, now extremely nervous and wondering about her own safety.

  NEGATIVE. THE OFFENDING SERPENT AGENTS HAVE BEEN EXPELLED FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN REGION. SLEEP, REST AND RECUPERATION ARE RECOMMENDED.

  'I will take your advice, Glasses AI,' responded DanielIe, and with that she made her way to bed, removing the glasses and leaving them in a prominent position on top of her night table. What on Earth had she gotten herself into?