The Bookwyrm

As Nolan stood in front of the Turnstile, the words of his briefing went through his mind.

“You’re going to be performing a temporal pincer of sorts on the facility. Yes, it’s already exploded. Completely decimated. But there’s information in there that we need. Information that you’re going to get.

“The explosion was two hours ago. So, we’re going to invert you. We’re going to send you back in time to the point of the explosion. Then you’re going to ride the shockwave into the facility. Your gear will keep you safe from the heat and force. One of our scouts detected one of our agents being blasted away from the facility. That was you, moving backwards in time.

“The important thing to keep in mind for the entire operation is that it’s already happened. You’ll be moving backwards. You’ll see the effects of your actions before you take them. If you see a corpse start to move, and no bullet hole in the wall behind it, shoot at it. Likelihood is you were the one who took the person out. Let time guide you; you’ll find that you won’t need to make a plan, because you’ve already done it. You’re moving backwards. You’re a bright kid; you’ll figure it out.

“You learn pretty quickly in this line of work that all of time has already happened. Past, present, future…it all exists already. Let time guide you. Don’t try to defy it, because it will happen. Defying it only makes it happen in a far more unpleasant way.”

“So…we don’t have free will?” Nolan had asked. 

“Free will is an aspect of a higher dimension. From our perspective, no, we don’t have it. But we also can’t yet see time in the way that it really is. I think free will does exist, we just can’t perceive it yet.

“But that’s besides the point. You have a job; you’ll see what I mean in the field. Make your way to the turnstile at the center. I’m not worried about the details; like I said, time will guide you. Use the turnstile to start moving forward, get to the datacenter, then get out before the explosion. Extraction point is as we discussed.

“I’ll tell you something; you’ve already succeeded. We have confirmation right now that you’re in the extraction craft, safe, with the data. Don’t sweat the details. You survive and succeed.

“Just let time guide you.”

Now, he stood on the deck of one of their organization's aircraft carriers, waiting for his inverted self to arrive. You always entered the turnstile at the same time as your reversed version reversed-entered, which made sense.

This ship was equipped with a few different turnstiles of various sizes for different equipment and groups of people. The one Nolan stood in front of was a smaller one for a single person at a time; It was built inside a glass room that was built into the deck of the ship. The room was split in the middle with the proving window-One side of the room was lit with red lights, the other side blue. He stood outside of the glass room, waiting with an aide.

The ship was bustling with activity - helicopters and planes leaving and landing, agents rushing about. Their organization had destroyed the enemy compound Nolan was about to infiltrate, and another strike was being prepared. He probably wouldn’t have to take part in this next one, though.

Nolan wore black equipment, including a helmet and mask that was attached to his own air tanks. Air wouldn’t pass through the membranes of inverted lungs, so he’d need to bring his own supplies. Luckily, the air he had was enough to last him days, and the operation would only take him a few hours before he managed to start moving forward in time again.

A small helicopter eventually came and landed on the helipad closest to Nolan and the turnstile. A figure dressed in Nolan’s same uniform opened the door and began walking backwards towards the turnstile. That was Nolan, after his inversion, moving backwards in time.

The aid nodded to Nolan, then opened the two doors to the turnstile chamber. Nolan walked into the red room at the same time that his inverted self walked into the blue one, then, simultaneously, he stepped into the turnstile. 

The cylindrical machine spun slowly, the curved door closing and then re-opening. He tried to detect what was happening, but nothing felt inherently different. That was, until the turnstile opened again. Nolan was now standing in the blue side of the room. He stepped out of the turnstile at the same time that his forward moving self did, in the red room. Nolan watched as the other version of himself took the exact same actions he had taken moments before, reversed. 

The sounds of the ship sounded strange and alien. Voices calling and issuing orders were reversed, garbling them and making them sound as if they were in a different language. Waves crashed against the hull of the ship in reverse; ocean spray materializing and springing from the deck before coming together as it vanished back into the ocean. Aircraft flew and landed in reverse, and personnel ran around backwards. It was disorienting.

Nolan walked towards the helicopter that he’d seen himself step out of moments earlier. Its blades slowly rotated backwards. He climbed inside, fastening himself in the back seat, behind a pane of glass that separated where he was from the front part of the vehicle. There were three other people in the helicopter; a pilot, a copilot, and a third agent.

Once he was fastened, the helicopter began to rise into the air, going through a reverse landing. It turned in the air and began flying backwards away from the ship, across the ocean. This meant that Nolan couldn’t clearly see where they were going, though he did have a view of the ocean around them from his window.

The sun had just barely risen above the horizon when Nolan entered the turnstile. Now, inverted, he watched as the sun slowly dipped below the ocean again, a reverse of the sunrise he’d seen minutes before. Inversion was surreal.

The third non-pilot agent, clad in gear similar to his own, said something, his voice reversed and untranslatable.

“Sorry,” Nolan said. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

The other agent didn’t say anything after that. 

It was a few minutes later that Nolan realized; from the agent’s perspective, Nolan himself had spoken first, and then the agent had responded.

He tried not to dwell on how strange that was.

After about 45 minutes of flying, Nolan could see the land, darkened by night, appear in place of the ocean. The moon was nearly full, giving some illumination. The beaches below gave way to rocky cliffs, after which there was a thick jungle.

After a few more minutes, the helicopter lowered near the ground, and the side door opened. Peering out, Nolan could see the reverse effect of the propellers’ thrust, with dirt and debris being pulled inward by the wind.

He nodded to the other agent, then jumped from the helicopter and landed on the jungle floor. The helicopter closed its door and flew inland.

From his new vantage point on the ground, Nolan could clearly see the billowing pillar of smoke left from the explosion of the facility he was infiltrating. The smoke moved inwards and downwards, the puffy dark clouds curling inwards like some strange tractor beam on the ground was drawing it in. 

The sounds of the forest were also strange. Birds and insects that he could see flew backwards, and the nighttime chatter took on an alien ambiance in his ears. It was haunting, and gave Nolan chills. He began moving towards the plume of smoke with a measure of haste. 

Traveling through a dense jungle while inverted had its own measure of strangeness. Nolan would reach for a slightly broken branch to steady himself, and it would mend itself as he put his weight on it. He clambered over a log with some scraped moss on it, and the moss came back after he touched it. In a muddy portion of the jungle, Nolan could see each of his footprints before he took them.

The words of his briefing came back to him. “You’ll see the effects of your actions before you take them…Don’t try to defy it.”

Nolan began walking through the mud, his steps perfectly matching the footprints. They vanished behind him as he moved.

After several more minutes of traveling through the forest, he began to see signs of the explosion. Fallen trees and smoldering foliage started to pop up. As he continued traveling, the flames got thicker and thicker, their glimmering tongues flickering in reverse, as if they were being pulled into the wood which they fed on. Nolan watched as a fallen tree suddenly began straightening itself, flames and branches pulling inwards as its split trunk re-formed and it stood itself up again. 

He eventually reached the clearing where the facility had once stood. Flames danced around him, but his gear protected him from the heat and flames. Smoke from the various burning plants all were drawn inwards, making the ground itself seem like some kind of vacuum cleaner. The large pillar of smoke from the facility was thickening and shrinking, meaning that Nolan was nearing the point in time where the explosion had happened.

Metal rubble began to appear amongst the burning branches, and the smoke continued to thicken as he moved forward. Eventually, once he was close to the crater of the explosion, he crouched down amongst the rubble, waiting for the moment of truth. The stars and moon above were obscured by the smoke, but the smoke was slowly thinning as time moved backwards.

Nolan sat there for a few minutes as the smoke continued to gather. The billowing pillar from the facility was shrinking at a much faster rate, now. Nolan suddenly felt a slight pull at the front of his body. The wood and metal around him seemed mostly unburned, and the smoke was clearing rapidly.

 Suddenly, some of the dirt and debris began to move inwards slightly. The force Nolan felt pulling on him increased. Debris began to fly into the air and a dust cloud formed around him. Nolan glanced behind him and saw a shockwave pulling inwards, bringing flying debris and flames with it. It was a surreal sight. The smoke above the facility formed into a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame before pulling inwards as debris flew towards the center. The shockwave crossed over Nolan, and he was launched into the air, pulled towards the reverse explosion.

Nolan soared, flames and debris flying around him. He reached the zenith of his arc, then started to be pulled downwards. He continued to fall until the explosion abruptly ended and the metal facility suddenly materialized beneath him.

He hit the ground and rolled, coming out of it in a crouch. Immediately, he reached for the special timepiece on his wrist and started a timer that began counting upwards. He’d reverse the watch as he un-inverted himself, and it would tell him how much time he had to get out of the facility before it exploded.

Nolan pulled his small assault rifle out of its holster and looked around. He was now on a metal helicopter platform in the upper levels of the metal fortress. As the ones running this facility were preoccupied with the battle elsewhere, there wasn’t much security. The platform was free of any people, but Nolan saw the corpses of two guards on either side of the door into the facility.

There wasn’t a hint of smoke in the sky, now. The moon shone brightly as Nolan carefully crept towards the door and the two dead guards on either side of it. As he got closer, the corpse on the left began to shift slightly, before suddenly standing up. Nolan, relying on instinct and remembering what he’d been taught, aimed and fired a bullet at the rising figure.

The bullet passed through the wound of the fallen trooper, seeming to heal the wound as it went through and embedded itself in the wall. Blood splattered in reverse, moving inwards. The figure, now alive and moving, had risen with his gun pointed directly at Nolan. Nolan ducked and rolled in anticipation, and sure enough, a series of bullets flew out of the night and into the barrel of the trooper’s gun. 

In an attempt to avoid further fire, Nolan moved forwards to try to disarm the trooper. Strangely, he didn’t have to; the trooper placed his gun on the ground before scrambling away from it, then moving towards Nolan as if to fight him in hand to hand combat. The side of Nolan’s head was suddenly pulled towards the trooper’s fist, and his head was jerked to the side. He’d just been punched in reverse.

Nolan went to block what seemed to be the trooper’s next strike, but as he did, the trooper’s discarded rifle slid across the ground before springing back into the trooper’s hand. From his opponent’s perspective, he’d just knocked the rifle out of his hand. 

Nolan ducked towards the doorway’s control panel as his opponent fired more inverted shots at him, dodging the backwards bullets. He clicked the button that closed the door, which, to his inverted perspective, opened it. Nolan looked up to see a bullet hole in the wall in front of him suddenly gathering dust and smoke, and ducked as the hole re-sealed itself and the bullet flew into the trooper’s rifle.

Nolan ran into the interior of the facility, into a dimly lit hallway of black metal. As he turned to see his pursuer, he noticed the corpse of the second guard start to move. He quickly fired a shot towards the figure, and the guard suddenly stood up. Nolan immediately slammed the “open” button on the interior panel, and the door slammed shut. Nolan tensely waited for a moment for them to come after him, then realized that at this point, they hadn’t seen him yet. They couldn’t fight him anymore, because from their perspective, they didn’t know he was there.

Nolan turned and crept deeper into the facility.