Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			       presents

		   UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES GOLDEN AGE
			     STOLEN TIME

			       starring
			     Derek Bacon
				 and
			       Teleute

		   Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins
	Technical documentation from the notes of Derek Bacon
		     A gentle massage by MegaZone

		(c) 1996 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


	   SUPER DIMENSIONAL FORTRESS 17 (WDF WAYWARD SON)
	      MONDAY 16 DECEMBER 1996 (BUT NOT BY MUCH)

	Derek was working on a new piece of documentation when she
came to him.  He didn't notice her at first, intent as he was on the
screen of his primitive, but insisted-upon, VT220 terminal.  Chris
Meadows had finished the functional spec for the new TR-560
"tricorder" portable sensor pack, and after an afternoon poring over
that and playing with one of the first production 560s, Derek had felt
confident enough with it to start this project, in an unaccustomed
burst of motivation.  He had felt restless all day, in fact, edgy and
weirdly energetic.  It had been starting to bother him before he
started on his project, but since then all outside concerns had melted
away, and he worked with an intensity all but unknown to him.
	So, intent as he was on his work, he didn't notice the pale,
black-haired, dark-clad woman who had entered his cabin until she
spoke:
	"Derek."
	So startled was he that he jumped, almost jostling the
keyboard from his lap; then he turned around in his chair, and, seeing
her, blinked.
	"Uh, yes?" he replied.  "Something I can help you with?"  He
didn't recognize her, but that wasn't all that surprising; it was a
big ship, and they had been taking on new crewmembers at a fairly high
rate of late, filling out the ship's complement from the recruiting
offices that had been opening on a hundred worlds around the United
Galactica.  Although, now that he thought about it, she did look
rather familiar, in a faintly disquieting sort of way.
	"You could say that," replied the enigmatic woman quietly.
	Derek looked puzzled, laying the keyboard aside and rising
from his chair.  Standing, he towered over his visitor, as he towered
over most people: at six foot six and somewhere in the neighborhood of
three hundred sixty pounds, Sublieutenant Derek Bacon towered over
most everybody humanoid.
	"Do I know you?" he asked, feeling increasingly ill at ease
with this odd visitor.
	"Everybody knows me, eventually," she replied.
	"Oh, well, that's useful," Derek grumbled.
	"My name," said the visitor, walking a bit further into the
room, "is Teleute.  I guess you'd think of me as the personification
of Death."
	Derek raised an eyebrow.  "Uh-huh."  Boy, he thought to
himself.  We do pick up the weird ones, don't we?  Zoner must have
found this one.
	"Come on," she said, indicating the door.  "Let's go for a
little walk."
	Derek took a step toward the door, then paused.  Hold on a
second.  The universe had turned out a lot weirder than Derek had
initially expected -already-.  Suppose this woman really was the angel
of death?  He had an idea that, in that case, he wouldn't be wanting
to go for a walk with her.  That sounded like the kind of euphemism he
would prefer to avoid.  On the other hand, it couldn't be -that-
simple to dodge the issue, could it?  'No, I don't think I will.'  'Oh,
OK then.  Guess I'll be going.'  No, things don't work that way.
	She noticed his hesitation and looked mildly, if
good-naturedly, exasperated.  "Come on, I'm not here to take you
anyplace permanently.  That won't be for rather a while yet.  Each in
his own time."
	Derek shrugged.  Why would she lie?  Assuming she was telling
him the straight story when she said who she was, of course.  He
stepped into his slippers and went.
	They stepped out of the door of his quarters, but instead of
entering Corridor 16J like they should have, they were on a street.  A
street, Derek realized as he looked around and got his startled
bearings back, that no longer existed.  A street in Worcester, the
Worcester that wasn't there any more, where someone he knew had lived
once.
	It was winter, but not all that cold, oddly enough; snow was
piled on the curbs, but it had the curiously sharp-edged shapes
created by incomplete meltoff, and the air was warm enough that Derek
wasn't overly cold despite the fact that he was in shirtsleeves,
without even the light jacket of his uniform to cover his T-shirt.  He
could have done without being Worcestered on, though; a mist somewhere
between rain and fog hung over the city and the overcast sky was
darkening into night.  Snow creeped into his slippers.
	"You know where we are, I assume," said Teleute.
	"I think so," said Derek, "but I'm not sure when."
	"Same day we just left," said Teleute.  "Except it's fifteen
or so hours later... in a world that might have been."
	"Are you the Ghost of Christmas Present?" asked Derek
accusingly.  "You're too verbal to be the Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come.  And I don't see any chains.  Either way, you're early."
	"No, not quite," Teleute replied, the corners of her mouth
hinting at a wry smile.  "You've got the basic idea, though.  Come on,
I want to show you something."  She set off down the sidewalk toward
one of the buildings.  Derek, following, recognized it, sort of.
	"They've turned Liz's building into a Chia House," he
remarked, looking up at the damp faux stucco exterior of a building he
had known to be yellow clapboard.  "I'll bite, why are we visiting an
alternate Liz?"
	"We aren't," replied Teleute as she walked up the steps and
opened the front door.  "She doesn't live here any more, but you did."
	"Oh," said Derek, too confused to note the verb tense.  He
followed her up and into the lobby; she then proceeded to open the
door to the first-floor apartment and enter it.
	Inside, the apartment's small living room was surprisingly
tidy and surprisingly packed.  People sat in all three chairs and
three more were on the couch; people sat on the floor and stood in the
archway to the kitchen.  More people still were in the kitchen
itself.  Derek knew all of them, though they looked different than he
expected in most cases.  They didn't seem to notice this oddly-dressed
Derek, who must have looked like he had just run away from a marching
band with his uniform pants and regulation gray t-shirt, or the woman
with him, which struck an annoyingly familiar chord with him.
	"OK, let me guess," he said.  "They can't see or hear us."
	"Of course not," replied Teleute.  "We don't belong here."
	"Oh.  Y'know, I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm
really not gonna like the direction you're taking this in."
	"I don't suppose you will, people never do.  Most people don't
really like me, you know," she remarked with a mixture of sadness and
sarcasm.  "Recognize anyone?"
	"Almost everyone," said Derek.  "There's Ben, and Truss, and
Andrew... they don't look like they've slept in about a week.  What's
going on here?"
	Teleute looked up at him, sidelong, with hooded eyes that
revealed nothing.  "For lack of a better word, you could call it a
wake."
	"For... Wait...  You're telling me this is..."
	"For you."
	"For me?!"
	"For you."  Teleute crossed her arms behind her head and rocked
on her heels.
	Shocked into silence, Derek took in the gathering for a few
minutes.  People looked tired and stunned, but occasionally, they
roused themselves to laugh - usually when one of them related an
anecdote about Derek himself.  People stumbled over the verb tenses,
as if unaccustomed to speaking of him in the past tense.  Every time
they did, others' faces would twist for the barest of instants, the
pain beneath the social equilibrium briefly exposed.
	Ben went into the front bedroom, Shawn's room, and shut
the door behind him; unnoticed, Derek followed.  There, he seemed to
gather himself in the quiet, then picked up the phone, dialed, and
started a conversation with someone.
	A conversation in which he informed the person at the other
end - his father, he'd said "Dad" at the outset - that Derek was...
	... dead.
	Derek turned and rushed out of the house, stopping partway
down the street and taking deep, gulping breaths of the misty air.  As
Teleute walked up behind him, he whirled on her.
	"What is this?  How could this happen?  If it's the same day
wherever we are, then I'm only 25!"
	Teleute shrugged.  "Random thing," she said.  "Cars crash.
Planes fall out of the sky.  Babies die in their sleep.  And sometimes
people go into the hospital and they don't come out.  There isn't
always a reason for these things." 
	"That's not good enough!  Those are my friends in there, one
way or another, going through hell because of this random thing of
yours!  Why are you doing this?"
	"It isn't my decision.  It's my job, and I do it.  All of you
Wedge Defense people did an en-masse end run around my corner of the
natural order of things," said Teleute without rancor.  "I understand
why you did it, and I don't hold it against you.  One way or another
we'll meet again, if not sooner, then later.  But I'm making a point
of visiting each of you on the day I originally had you scheduled
for... as a wake-up call of sorts."
	Derek blinked.  "A wake-up call."
	Teleute nodded.  "To help keep you centered.  You don't
realize what a responsibility it is to be immortal.  You can't
understand what it will be like for you.  Every moment from the one
when you first noticed me, however many there may be, is one cheated
from the way things were originally supposed to be.  I want to do as
much as I can to make sure that, now that it's been done, none of you
waste any of that stolen time.  A long-lived mortal, not too unlike
you, once said, 'Time is the fire in which we burn.'  He was
right... don't take the fact that you have a longer fuse for granted."
	Derek said nothing, his face almost blank as the gears behind
it worked.  Finally, at length, he nodded.
	"I think I understand," he said.
	"There are great things ahead for you," said Teleute, "but
don't think that what's gone before is insignificant.  You've seen how
many friends you have in this might-have-been; not even all of them
are in there right now.  They won't fit in that apartment.  They'll
come from all over the country and more who are unable to get away
will send their regards.  Unfortunately, though, your father won't be
able to get the mortuary to do that stuffed-like-a-bear thing.  He
-will- ask, though."
	Derek, despite his state of extreme consternation, snickered.
Yep... that's Dad for you.
	"Your strength is the joy you bring to others," Teleute told
him.  "Remember that.  Always remember that."
	He nodded again,a little more firmly.  "I'll do that."  He
cracked a grin.  "I suppose part of the deal now is that I can't find
out when I've been rescheduled to see you again," he remarked wryly.
	Teleute snorted.  "I don't even know myself.  My brother is
the keeper of that book.  Only he knows."
	"Oh, well, that's reassuring."
	"Relax, you won't remember any of this consciously anyway."
	"Oh.  Well, of course not.  I should've guessed -that-."
	Teleute braced her hands against his chest and stood on tiptoe
to place a gentle kiss on his cheek.  Then came darkness.

	Derek awoke with a start, jerking upright in his chair, the
VT220 keyboard spilling to the floor.  Images flooded through his mind
too fast for him to grasp any of them, and then they were gone, as
dreams are wont to do; scrambling to hold onto them made them slip
away faster, until within seconds he was left with nothing but a
strange, disoriented sense of foreboding.
	Time is the fire in which we burn.
	Who said that?  Where did I hear it?
	Must have been in a movie.
	He returned to work, picking up where he left off to add a
critical warning.

	STOP!  DO NOT EAT YOUR TRICORDER!*

	*Certain life forms may find the foamed duranium casing and
sarium krellide power unit to be tasty treats.  However, personnel
should be assumed that, in any but the most dire emergency situations,
consumption of personal equipment is frowned upon.  In most cases,
crewmembers will be required to pay for a replacement unit.

	Yes... that would do nicely.

---

Gryphon here.

As fate would have it, we here in the real world live in the
might-have-been shown above.  Derek Bacon died of what doctors like to
call "natural causes" (as though there can be any "natural" death for
a man of 25 years) early in the morning of Monday the 16th of
December.

I've been slowly working to digest this development, a piece at a
time.  I suppose the explosive inspiration for this piece, which came
like so many others when I really should have been sleeping, is part
of the healing process...

Derek, as a friend of mine first met very shortly after my arrival at
WPI in late summer 1991, has been involved with my work in one way or
another since the beginning of my career on the Internet.  He was one
of the unsung members of the Eyrie Productions team - a bit character
in the core UF saga, and in real life a valued proofreader/editor and
admired fellow author (he's the creator of the Universal Science
Fiction Parody).  Over the past year or so he was very active in the
design process for the next major Undocumented Features story arc, and
was excited about the prospects of becoming a much more major
character in that arc.

That will, I'm happy to say, still happen, although with less input
from Derek than I would have liked, to understate the matter hugely.
I've recovered most of his notes, and will be proceeding with the arc
as planned (I can't give you any details on it right now... it's
still secret).

I'll miss Derek terribly, but it's my hope that, by going on with our
plans for UF and by preserving his other works for posterity (I'll be
constructing a web site for his works, with Zoner's help, once I get
back home from my Christmas vacation), I'll be able to make sure his
contributions aren't forgotten.  He gave all of us who knew him so
much joy by his presence in our lives that we still haven't quite
grasped the enormity of the hole his passing has left for us to fill.

Goodbye, Derek.  I love you.

 - Benjamin D. Hutchins
   at 15 Lee St. #1
   Worcester, MA
   12/19/1996
   04:39 EST


Zoner here:

Well...  So I'm laying in bed reading at 01:30 Monday morning, just 
starting to think of sleep, when the phone rings.  Since only family
or friends call at that hour I picked it up instead of letting the
machine get it.

I don't know if any of you have had someone tell you very bad news
over the phone before, but I've had that dubious honor a few times too
many.  With the first sounds from Ben I knew something was seriously
wrong.  Then I heard him say "Derek's dead".  And I didn't register
that for a long moment.  You know how sometimes your brain just can't
believe it heard something right so it loops it around to try a
different analysis?  But eventually I realized I had indeed heard him
right.  I think I just chanted 'fuck fuck fuck' for a while, I don't
remember most of the rest of the phone conversation.  Shock is not an
inaccurate description of my state.

I didn't have anyone to talk to out here, so I spent most of the night
swinging between sobbing and disbelief.  I eventually put myself to
sleep with a few tumblers of scotch.

Over the past three days I've been fighting to deal with it.  Derek
was younger than me, he's been at the core of my closest group of
friends since we first met at WPI.  I don't even remember how we met,
it seems like he was just always there.  Derek was one of the core
GweepCo members.

I've been thinking of the last time we spent time together.  A month
or so back I worked a tradeshow in Boston.  On the weekend I drove to
Worcester and hung out at GweepCo.  Late that night Andrew, Derek, and
I went to IHOP for a midnight dinner.  You never think when you see
someone like that that it will be the last time.

Kind of an odd thing that's bothering me - Derek never got to see "Mars
Attacks!"  I know it sounds silly, but Derek was a B-movie lover.  When
I saw the movie the strongest thought I had was "Derek will LOVE
this."  Weird how odd things wedge in your brain.

I loved Derek a great deal and I hope we can do his memory justice in
UF.  I know he was excited about the plans, and I think he'd want to
see them played out.

Farewell my friend.

- MegaZone
  917 Virginia St
  Berkeley, CA 
  12/19/1996
  04:43 PST