TIME FOG
Tom Mazanec
 
 
Maybe it was the Large Hadron Collider...the first documented time fog appeared just
moments after the first full power 14 Tev collision in 2015. Of course, the body of that 
giant long-necked pinniped washed ashore on Vancouver Island a couple weeks before 
that...but people have been reporting sea serpents for centuries.

This time fog had appeared to the satellites about twenty minutes ago, so it would vanish 
in another minute or two. Outside time, of course...people who come from inside a time fog 
say no time passes for them. They come from other presents, and whoever is caught in them 
here presumably goes to their present there...although no transportee has so far come from 
a history that has time fogs of its own, so we don't know for sure.

The fog was typical size, a few hundred feet in diameter. I could see half a foot or so 
through the pastel purple glowing haze that gives them their name, to the unreachable 
boundary. I saw a picture of some unfortunate bisected by a time fog boundary once...half 
of him, that is. If you reach into the light, you encounter growing pressure, but I had no
wish to try the experiment.

This was the first fog I personally dealt with, although I've trained plenty. They occur 
somewhere in the world every day or two, so I guess it was just a matter of time. I raise 
the tranq rifle and prepare to put anyone inside under, so they can be put into quarantine.
VITS came from a time fog, and killed a couple million people. The next virus might kill a 
couple billion.

The fog vanishes, and I see a family of people dressed in what looks like a cross between 
Arabian Nights outfits and American Indian costumes. I shoot one and she drops after 
running out into the field. It is just a small girl...I hope she does not get an overdose.

I walk over and get a closer look at her. She is dark chocolate in skin, with long straight
hair and a prominant nose. With that mixture, the divergence point is probably several 
thousand years ago. Her technology is almost certainly behind ours...the Scientific-
Industrial Revolution seems to be a low probability development and worlds that far away 
are generally Medieval. Only a few fairly close worlds have reverse engineerable ultra-
tech, and that has only advanced us a couple decades before we started burning the post-fog
area.

Speaking of burning, the men with the flamethrowers are starting work now. We have enough 
trouble with indecs, the ten legged insect analogues from a different Cambrian Explosion.
And the schools of sea leaches...oceanic time fog areas are nuked after they disappear 
(before that doesn't scratch them), since they can't be quickly surrounded and contained.

Still, I can't help thinking one of these days we will not be able to stop something Really
Bad from coming out of a time fog.

DRIZZLE DRAZZLE DRUZZLE DROME
TIME FOR THIS ONE TO COME HOME