Mike Chen - Here and Now and Then

To save his daughter, hell go anywhereand any-when...

Kin Stewart is an everyday family man: working in IT, trying to keep the spark in his marriage, struggling to connect with his teenage daughter, Miranda. But his current life is a far cry from his previous career...as a time-traveling secret agent from 2142.

Stranded in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s after a botched mission, Kin has kept his past hidden from everyone around him, despite the increasing blackouts and memory loss affecting his time-travelers brain. Until one afternoon, his rescue team arriveseighteen years too late.

Their mission: return Kin to 2142, where hes only been gone weeks, not years, and where another family is waiting for him. A family he cant remember.

Torn between two lives, Kin is desperate for a way to stay connected to both. But when his best efforts threaten to destroy the agency and even history itself, his daughters very existence is at risk. Itll take one final trip across time to save Mirandaeven if it means breaking all the rules of time travel in the process.

A uniquely emotional genre-bending debut, Here and Now and Then captures the perfect balance of heart, playfulness, and imagination, offering an intimate glimpse into the crevices of a fathers heart and its capacity to stretch across both space and time to protect the people that mean the most.

Praise for Here and Now and Then

A subtly woven meditation about the fragility of time raises the bar in this smart, fun, and affectionate story.

Kirkus Reviews

Heartfelt and thrilling... Chen revitalizes the trope of the absent and unavailable father... Chens concept is unique, and [his characters] agony is deeply moving. Quick pacing, complex characters, and a fascinating premise make this an unforgettable debut.

Publishers Weekly , starred review

A strong and very real father-daughter relationship is tested across the centuries as Chens characters navigate adventure and consequences together. A tight net of excitement and wonder.

Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft and Hugo and Nebula finalist

A rare, fresh gem of a story that blends high tech time travel thrills with the all-in stakes of a parents love for their child. The world needs more butt-kicking middle-aged chef heroes.

Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma

Gripping and gorgeously crafted. Chen takes the fabric of space-time and gives it real humanity in this compelling tale of love, family, and the choices made to protect them.

Cass Morris, author of From Unseen Fire

A generous, warm-hearted adventure. Its the story of a father, a daughter, and a love stronger than time itself. I absolutely loved it.

Kat Howard, Alex Awardwinning author of An Unkindness of Magicians

Chen does what the very best sci-fi writers dohe takes a fascinating concept and elevates it with brilliant execution and deeply heartfelt plot twists that make this story less about the (fun) conventions of the genre and more about the profound experience of being human. Here and Now and Then is a page-turner, an examination of love and loss, and, most of all, a dazzling debut from a wonderfully unique new voice.

Michael Moreci, author of Black Star Renegades and contributor to StarWars.com

HERE AND NOW
AND THEN

MIKE CHEN

Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek-culture websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist), covered the NHL for mainstream media outlets, and ghostwritten corporate articles appearing in Forbes, BuzzFeed, Enterpreneur, and more. A member of the Codex Writers Group, Mike calls the San Francisco Bay Area home, where he can often be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals.

www.MikeChenBooks.com

For Amelia

Contents

N o pulse beat beneath the skin.

Kin concentrated, waiting for the familiar thump to barely register with his senses. Not his heartbeat, but something equally important: a Temporal Corruption Bureau retrieval beacon, one fine-tuned to his specific biometrics.

After twenty-eight assignments over eight years, the implanted beacons soft pulse usually faded into the background, another subtlety of time travel that was simply part of the job. Like ones own heartbeat, it was one of those things that went unnoticed until it vanished. Now it was gone.

And with it, his return ticket to 2142.

Kin unwrapped the bandage, ignoring the burning pain through his abdomen as he tore the fabric off. His fingers found the dried green edge of binding gel and peeled the adhesion away from the gunshots entry point beneath his ribs. He carefully collected any dried gel fragments in a motel towel to be burned latereven in his roughest shape, he always adhered to timeline corruption protocols. No need for nosy 1996 janitorial staff to find future medical tech, even after usage.

The bright LED numbers on the wood-trim clock radio across the motel room showed that eight hours and four minutes had passed since his encounter. He could still feel the factory rooftop gravel digging into the back of his neck while wrestling his target, a time-traveling merc whod been hired to delay a senators husband, causing her to miss a vote on a seemingly benign banking regulation that would actually have decades of negative consequences. Theyd engaged, his arms and legs locking hers in a vise hold before she managed to grab a brick fragment and smash his kneecap.

Now his fingers gripped the bathroom sinks rim and he steadied himself, his left knee refusing to carry much weight.

A brick to the knee and a boot to the ribs. Then a gunshot, not from a plasma discharger but an era-appropriate semiautomatic pistol.

The targets smirk still burned in his memory, the slightest of smiles visible through thin moonlight. For a flash, hed wondered why she found their encounter amusing, but when the guns barrel slid down from his forehead to the implanted retrieval beacon, he knew.

Stranding him, it seemed, was a crueler twist than murder.

Kin cursed himself for letting her get the better of him, for trusting his gut instead of the endless intel notes provided by the TCB.

Shed let her guard down a few seconds later, which was the only opening he needed, adrenaline powering a takedown. The sickening crunch of a snapped neck brought on both relief and self-loathing, typical rushes that came with TCB Protocol Eight Ninety-Six:

In case of life-threatening resistance, field agents are authorized to eliminate the target in lieu of apprehension.

Mission accomplished. Now what?

Kin racked his brain, searching through memories of processes, protocols, and training, anything that might give some insight into what happened when the beacon went offline. But the endless list of technical specifications and failsafe details offered little comfort, things field agents memorized for no good reason, really.

Except there was a good reason: the beacon never went offline. It couldnt. Not while he was alive.

Assess and execute , he told himself. Processes, lists, mental visualization, his minds eye sorted it all using years of agent training. Kins hand pressed firmly against the wound, waiting for the slightest of tremors to register across his palm. Blood oozed out, bright red slipping between his dark brown fingers and running down his shirtless side. One drop hit the bathroom tile of the motel room safe house, then another and another. Temporal Crimes field agent I-D-R-one-five, code E-six, interface active. The activation phrase given at the end of every mission.