Chronopunk: A novel (Episode 6)
If you went back in time, what knowledge would you gift the past to save the future?
Chapter 19
Losing a fight is bad enough, but Mounir’s situation was about to take a turn for the worse. As he sat in the fighter’s lounge, unwrapping his blood-stained gloves, Ashley—Simbi’s brother—burst through the door. Mounir barely had a moment to register his shock. Jason, gripping Ashley’s arm, tried to pull him back and urged him to leave, but Ashley shook him off and marched straight toward Mounir.
“Simbi’s dead, and you need to get out of here fast. There’s no time for questions. Get ready, pack your things, and go. They’re coming for you. They’ll kill you and your son. You’ve got to get the hell out of this place—out of the town, the country, whatever it takes. Just leave now.”
Mounir instantly grasped the gravity of the situation. Simbi hadn’t called him because she was no longer alive. The Belgian drug cartel must have finally caught up with her, finishing the job they’d been intent on carrying out ever since her shipment was busted in Barcelona and she failed to pay them. Mounir realized the urgency of escaping immediately and felt a surge of gratitude toward Ashley for risking his own life to deliver the warning. Drug cartels are methodical with their executions, reminiscent of old-school vendettas. They don’t just target the person responsible for crossing them—they wipe out the entire bloodline, leaving no loose ends. Usually, they focus on the male members of a family, but not this time. They’d killed Simbi because she was the primary culprit, and now Mounir, his son Mody, and even Ashley were in their crosshairs. Adrenaline flooded Mounir’s system. He thanked Ashley for coming, grabbed his belongings, and bolted for the airport. While in the self-driving car, he called his agent, pressing him to arrange a private plane as quickly as possible.
“Man, you just lost a fight. Why the extravagance?”
“Just do it,” Mounir replied, his voice calm and resolute.
The plane was waiting when Mounir arrived at the airport, and two and a half hours later, they landed at Oakland Airport. He didn’t head straight home—that would’ve been a death sentence, with the cartel almost certainly lying in wait. Instead, he made his way to a corner store in East Oakland run by Hussein, an old friend of Simbi’s. Since the early days of their relationship, Simbi and Mounir had agreed that if one of them ever went missing in an emergency, the other would go to Hussein’s store and ask for a message. Mounir should’ve been on edge, but he wasn’t. Simbi was gone, and there was nothing he could do to change that. But Mody might still be alive. If he was, Simbi would’ve left word with Hussein about his whereabouts. It was a slim hope. The cartel had likely caught Simbi with Mody and killed them both. Still, there was a chance she’d sensed the danger in time and hidden their son somewhere safe. If anyone knew where Mody was, it’d be Hussein.
As Mounir stepped into the shop, Hussein immediately motioned him to the back. He pressed a slip of paper into Mounir’s hand and insisted he leave through the back door. Mounir thanked him, followed the instructions, and glanced at the note. An address was written on it. For the first time since Ashley had broken the news of Simbi’s death, emotion gripped Mounir. This had to be where Mody was. If it was, his son was still alive. “Relieved” didn’t even scratch the surface—he was overcome with elation. But certainty would only come once he held Mody in his arms.
The address pointed to a nail salon on a sketchy block not far from Hussein’s store in East Oakland. When Mounir arrived, the salon was already closed. He knocked, and a petite Asian woman opened the door.
“Hi, I’m Mou—” She cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand and grabbed his arm. They moved through the deserted nail salon to a door at the rear. When she opened it, several Asian men and women turned to stare at Mounir.
“This must be a safe house for illegal immigrants,” he thought.
Words couldn’t capture Mounir’s joy when the woman opened another door and he saw Mody sitting there, safe, playing games on a Neuralink device. Simbi had managed to protect him. Why she couldn’t save herself would forever remain unanswered, but Mounir had no time to dwell on it. He scooped up Mody, kissed his cheek, and hurried out of the nail salon.
Next, he needed the money. He and Simbi had stashed emergency funds—about $200,000—in a specific spot on the Berkeley campus. It was enough to get him out of Oakland and start fresh somewhere else. The bag held cold storage codes for Bitcoin, new passports for him and Mody, and possibly further instructions about what had happened. They’d agreed that if either of them was compromised and had to run, they’d leave a note there to explain. But Mounir found no note. Simbi must not have had the chance.
After Berkeley, Mounir called Darrell, a shady drug dealer he’d known before meeting Simbi.
“I need to get out of town. You got anything?” Mounir barked into the phone.
Caught off guard, Darrell tried his usual small talk. “Hey, man, haven’t heard from you in a while. What’s up? Where you headed?”
“No time for questions,” Mounir snapped. “Do you have a truck that can get me out of here? It’s me and an eight-year-old boy.”
“Tommy’s rolling out to Portland in about two hours. He can hide you in the back. It’ll cost you, though.”
“Done.”
Tommy hauled technical equipment from the Port of Oakland up the coast to Portland, Tacoma, and Vancouver. Mounir agreed to a $2,000 fee—a steep price, even for such a shady deal. Tommy and Darrell were the type to squeeze every dime out of anyone, even their own mother, if she were in a bind. Mounir had neither the time nor the energy to haggle. The overnight drive from Oakland to Portland turned out to be less grueling than he’d expected. Mody slept through most of it, and even Mounir managed to snag a few hours of rest. Tommy dropped them off at a depot in Portland, where Mounir checked into a motel to establish a temporary base and figure out his next step. He bought some clothes, got food for Mody, and finally crashed for a proper sleep. The following day, he began arranging his escape from the country, aiming to settle somewhere safe. And this is how the rest of Mounir’s life began.
Chapter 20
There are two ways to cut yourself off from the world: lose yourself in the chaos of a bustling city among millions, or retreat to a place where no one else is. Mounir opted for the latter. His work led him to Iceland, a sprawling slab of rock perched in the Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and Norway. With its relentless geothermal activity and striking rock formations, the island offered an ideal setting for studying tectonic processes.
“You’d be amazed at how much the lithosphere reveals about cosmological evolution. Iceland is like a living lab for tectonics—rich and diverse in its geological events,” Professor Leif Bjornasson remarked over coffee in one of Reykjavik’s trendy hotels.
With his towering frame and Viking-esque presence, Bjornasson immediately drew Mounir’s focus. His soft-spoken voice blended the warmth of an old friend with the cool, analytical distance of a veteran scientist. Bjornasson’s research on cosmological plate tectonics had earned him a near-celebrity status among planetary scientists and cosmologists worldwide.
“Herds are for the uninspired. You can either follow the crowd or carve your own path—it’s your choice.”
Bjornasson took a sip of his coffee, his piercing blue eyes fixed on Mounir.
“You’d be joining our Earth and Planetary Science department. Iceland is home to some of the world’s most cutting-edge natural research facilities for planet formation and earth sciences. Your lab would be in Akureyri, on the northern side of the island, surrounded by some of the most breathtaking landscapes on the planet. Unlike Antarctica or Greenland—the other hubs for planetary cosmology—this spot’s just a five-hour trip from Reykjavik. You could swing down here for a weekend of great food, fine coffee, and… well, whatever else you fancy.”
Mounir accepted the offer on the spot. Collaborating with Bjornasson on cutting-edge planetary science research was an excellent career move. More crucially, this remote outpost of the University of Iceland seemed likely to offer enough obscurity to keep the cartel off his trail.
Life in Iceland lived up to its promise. The island’s unique rock formations allowed Mounir to conduct fascinating experiments and pioneer new methods for modeling planetary formation. He settled into the remote lifestyle, with occasional trips to the capital providing just enough social contact to keep him from feeling entirely cut off. The only downside was Mody, who had to attend a boarding school in the UK. The separation weighed heavily on Mounir emotionally, and more critically, it posed a risk. Even though he’d enrolled Mody under a false name, the cartel’s reach was unpredictable. During his time in Iceland, Mounir took long hikes across its dramatic landscapes, especially drawn to the pitch-black volcanic beaches where ocean waves crashed against chunks of ice tumbling from conical hills. Iceland was neither purely ice nor rock—a land in flux, much like Mounir himself. After a little over four years, he decided to uproot once more, this time to the opposite end of the earth.
Professor Bjornasson’s lab had been collaborating on research in Antarctica, comparing data between Iceland and the South Pole. Mounir had visited several times and found it even more calming than Iceland. Plus, sending Mody to a boarding school in Hobart, Tasmania, felt safer than the UK. So, he applied for a full-time research position at Bjornasson’s Antarctic lab extension. The application process wasn’t exactly competitive. While working on the South Pole might be an adventure for some, most scientists limited their stays to the sunlit summer months. Year-round residence was a different beast altogether. Of the roughly six thousand people who worked there in summer, only about 10% stayed through the dark, frigid winter. It wasn’t a dream job by most standards, but Mounir didn’t mind. It was exactly what he craved: a remote haven with academic promise. So, he relocated from Iceland to Antarctica.
Mody, meanwhile, ended up in Sydney rather than Hobart—a change that proved far more convenient for Mounir. Regular flights between his Antarctic base and Sydney allowed him to visit his son more often. This shift dramatically shaped Mody’s life. For a boy brimming with energy, talent, and curiosity, Sydney was an ideal playground. Despite the strictness of boarding school, Mody dove headfirst into his own adventures. Girls, sports, surfing, music—he embraced it all with gusto. Life, to Mody, was one grand escapade from the start. Barely twelve, he was already holding hands with an older girl from a nearby school. While his classmates obsessed over breaking the rigid boarding school rules, Mody had no interest in either defying or obeying them—he simply rose above them. Pleasure was his guiding light, justifying everything. His infectious smile was like a superpower, fueling his boundless drive. School, play, love, sports—Mody tackled each with the same passion and skill, oblivious to the idea of prioritizing one over the others.
“I’ve seldom coached boys with this kind of attitude and work ethic,” Mody’s former swimming coach, Jamie Patterson, told Lisa during an interview for the background check tied to Mody’s recruitment for the time travel mission.
“With Mody, it never feels like he’s working. Whether it’s a brutal 10k swim at 6 a.m. or a punishing weightlifting session in the gym, he just flashes that smile and gets it done. He has this rare knack for blending pleasure with excellence. Some find it uplifting; others think it’s some eerie mastery of emotions. I don’t mind either way. He was a delight to coach and even more enjoyable to steer toward a win.”
Patterson guided Mody all the way to the national championships. That’s when Mounir stepped in, pressing Mody to abandon the sport. The last thing Mounir wanted was Mody’s name splashed across Australia’s national sports headlines. Swimming in Australia is like high school football in Texas—a fervor where adults bask in the supposed competitive brilliance of their kids. Nothing stirs the public more than a young athlete displaying genuine talent. Mounir wasn’t having it. He pushed Mody to quit and shift his focus to academics. Mody resisted at first but soon let it go. He’d just turned 15, and life was brimming with new possibilities.
“Why fuss over some trivial swimming contest?” he thought.
Mounir never shared the full story with Mody about his mother or why they relocated so frequently across the globe. Mody, however, was far from naive. He suspected that Simbi’s death wasn’t the accident Mounir claimed it to be. He also realized that his father’s pursuit of anonymity wasn’t merely a lifestyle preference, but a deeper, more existential necessity.
"I sometimes think my father is fleeing from something," he confided in Tate, his girlfriend at the time.
"It’s like he’s terrified of being tracked down," he said. "I’m not sure if it’s tied to his childhood in Casablanca or something more recent. But come on, it’s not normal for a top Berkeley grad to chase jobs in places like Iceland or Antarctica. Sure, working there for a stint makes sense, but my father seems committed to a life in icy, isolated corners, far from civilization. And then there’s this sudden demand for me to quit swimming. He claimed it’d hurt my academic career to mix sports with studies. That’s rich, coming from a guy who funded his Berkeley PhD as a professional MMA fighter. It just doesn’t add up."
Tate, whose father hailed from Libya, had heard plenty of similar tales within her own family.
"Look, Mody, you’ll only know as much as your father chooses to reveal," she said. "Don’t press him. He’s doing what he thinks is best for both of you. Curiosity killed the cat, you know."
Mody took her hand and kissed it softly.
"You’re right," he replied. "Why bother? I’ve got a great life here in Sydney. Still, I’d love to know what really happened to my mother."
"Please, don’t!" Tate interrupted, pressing her hand gently against his mouth.
"This is exactly what I’m saying," Tate insisted. "Don’t dig into it. Whatever it is, your father’s keeping it buried deep in his soul. Unearthing it will only bring you pain. It’s the same with my dad—I never ask about what happened in Libya. It’s better that way."
Chapter 21
When Mody stepped into the world of fighting, his obsession surged to new heights.
"It’s not just discipline," he explained to Tate during one of their evening walks. "That’s something you do out of duty. This is more—it’s like a drug that keeps you hooked."
"There’s something about fighting that draws me in," Mody said. "It’s like walking a tightrope between chaos and order—like the yin and yang of sports and life. To me, training and competing is about discovering the perfect path between the white realm of order and the black realm of chaos. Mastering that balance is what makes a champion."
Tate gave him a playful nudge on the shoulder.
"Easy there," she said. "You’re not a champ or a fighter yet. You’re just a teenager hooked on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I love your passion, and I’m sure you’ve got potential, but there’s a long journey ahead. Ask your dad about it."
Mody’s face darkened with a frown.
"My dad? He’d kill me if I told him about the MMA thing."
Whether Mody’s love for MMA stemmed from his father’s mysterious past or in spite of it wasn’t clear—and it didn’t matter. His obsession burned bright, and with his energy, talent, and determination, nothing could hold him back.
"No other sport compares to this," Mody said. "Maybe surfing comes close, but even then, you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature to bring the waves. In fighting, it’s just you and your opponent—man to man, brain to brain, hand to hand, foot to foot. That’s what makes it so thrilling."
Mody had just graduated from secondary school when a local Brazilian coach in Sydney offered to train him professionally. He jumped at the chance. Australia had long been a hotbed for cultivating fighting talent.
"There’s something about men and fists that captivates folks Down Under," Mody’s coach, Alex, remarked, contrasting Sydney with his hometown of Rio.
Local UFC champions like Alexander Volkanovski and Israel Adesanya had catapulted the sport into the national spotlight in the early 2020s. By the time Mody stepped into the cage, MMA was vying for prime-time attention alongside traditional Australian staples like surfing and Footy, the country’s take on rugby. Coach Alex took a calculated approach to molding Mody’s potential.
"There’s plenty of talent down here, but it needs careful nurturing," Alex explained. "Dominating the mat in training is one thing; building the mental toughness to compete at the top level is something else entirely." Mody proved to be the ideal student. With his agility and eagerness to learn, he absorbed every lesson Alex offered. His coach took an unconventional approach, blending traditional Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with the demands of modern MMA.
"Sometimes you have to look back when stepping forward," Alex said.
"Old techniques might not hold up in today’s game as they once did, but that doesn’t make them worthless. Dig into the roots and weave in what you find—that’s my approach."
Alex had earned a name in MMA circles for his knack for developing talent, though he was equally known for his stubborn attachment to traditional fighting styles and old-school methods. Mody was the perfect fit for this philosophy. As a physics undergrad at the University of New South Wales, he brought a blend of intellectual curiosity and a readiness to take risks. Add to that his natural talent and remarkable physique, and he seemed unstoppable. But in MMA, as Mody would soon discover, almost everything can go wrong. Two years after teaming up with Alex, the coach brought him to a fight in Perth.
Chapter 22
"We’re going to use this fight to test some classic techniques," Alex told Mody beforehand. "I want you to deliberately fight from your back—even if you spot openings, stay down and work the defensive moves we’ve drilled. Get comfortable with them. This bout matters, but a loss won’t derail your career. That’s why we’re taking a risk and treating it as a practice run."
As Mody entered the cage, he stuck to his coach’s game plan. In the second round, his opponent took him down. Mody remained on his back, fending off kicks with the defensive techniques they’d rehearsed.
"Look for an opening!" Alex screamed from his corner.
Mody stayed calm, defending patiently as he waited for his opponent to slip—just enough for him to seize an opportunity. The moment came. He grabbed his opponent’s foot and executed a classic Jiu-Jitsu takedown. It worked.
But instead of springing up to finish the fight, Mody remained on the ground, keeping hold of his opponent’s foot. He maneuvered into a position that compromised his opponent’s heel, forcing him onto the defensive. Then, unexpectedly, Mody let go.
The fight continued.
The crowd erupted in boos.
“Mody is practicing his defense from the back!" one commentator shouted into the microphone.
"And the crowd doesn’t like it. "
Mody won the fight by decision, but as he walked back to the fighters' lounge, he sensed something was off.
Before he could react, two men in uniform grabbed him and shoved him aside.
"We're with the police," one of them said before dragging him into a nearby room.
"What is going on?" Mody shouted.
"Where's Alex?"
Days later, Tate visited Mody in a local jail, where he was being held on charges of fight manipulation. His coach, Alex, had been under surveillance for years by Australian police, and even the FBI was investigating him for fixing fights and committing wire fraud in the U.S.
As it turned out, Alex was involved in a massive fight-fixing scheme that extended far beyond Australia. Coaches like him rigged fights to manipulate betting outcomes, turning MMA into a lucrative playground for high-stakes gamblers. The real reason Alex had wanted Mody to stay on his back wasn’t for strategy or training—it was to ensure the fight ended in a decision, just as the betting syndicates had planned.
Betting on fights had exploded into a global business, particularly in Asia, where professional gamblers wagered on everything from UFC championship bouts to small local events like the one in Perth.
It took several days for Mounir to arrive from Antarctica, where he was still stationed, to post bail for his son. Fortunately for Mody, Alex confessed and testified that Mody had no involvement in the scheme. But the damage was done.
The ordeal left a deep emotional scar. His romantic vision of the sport—the yin and yang of perfection—was shattered. MMA’s dark underbelly had revealed itself, and Mody could no longer look away.
His mother’s words echoed in his mind:
‘It’s not the cage—it’s the cockroaches around the cage that ruin the fighters.’
Chapter 22
Despite the ordeal, Mody refused to quit the sport. He found a new gym and kept training.
University life, by contrast, was far less complicated. After earning his undergraduate degree, he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, pursuing a PhD in Cosmology at the University of New South Wales. His research focused on planetary evolution and the symmetries of time.
"How do we know one rock is older than another? What does that really mean? And can we predict the future or look back into the past? That’s my PhD," he told his father over a glass of white wine at a fancy restaurant in Sydney.
Mounir was thrilled with his son’s career choice, but, much like with MMA, he couldn’t shake a lingering sense of unease.
His son was a man on a mission—he always had been. And Mounir knew all too well that mission obsession often leads to trouble.
"Why am I fascinated by time? Because it’s the complement to history—and I’m not just interested, I’m obsessed with history, especially my own. I need to know what happened to my mother. When you grow up essentially orphaned, with a father hiding among icebergs and a mother who supposedly died in an accident, you crave answers. My father tried to rewrite history with lies about my mother and himself. I’m not here to rewrite anything—I just want the truth. Since the present offers no clarity, my only path to uncovering it is to go back in time." Mody explained in a stale conference room SpaceX, where Lisa and her team were interviewing him for a secret mission.
Mody would only later learn that Lisa was enlisting him for a project that would ultimately send him back in time to reshape history. In many ways, Lisa was the ideal woman for him. Her presence echoed Simbi, his mother, stirring a deep familiarity. With a six-year age difference, Lisa was young enough to be his lover yet mature enough to fill the maternal void Simbi’s absence had left. While Mody cherished the physical and emotional joys of their romance, his longing ran deeper—he yearned for someone to step into his mother’s role. Unlike Tate, who had no desire to bridge such gaps, Lisa was perfectly suited for it. As his boss, she wielded authority, but Mody cared little for rank. What he sought was intellectual and spiritual guidance, qualities Lisa possessed in abundance. Their love affair sparked just weeks into his time at SpaceX and had been thriving ever since. Both deftly balanced bedroom intimacy with professional boundaries.
The early 2060s were a bustling era at SpaceX. After founding the first permanent Mars colony in the 2040s, the company shifted focus to constructing planetary communication networks. Staying ahead of technological leaps was woven into SpaceX’s core. Initial experiments in time travel gained momentum following Mongarthy’s breakthroughs. Originally tied to broader efforts in artificial intelligence, time travel evolved rapidly amid innovation and rivalry, eventually branching into its own division under Lisa’s leadership.
"Our goal is to merge generative AI with time travel," SpaceX CEO John Gardner told Wall Street analysts.
"They’re two sides of the same coin," he continued. "Generative AI thrives on harnessing symmetries, while time travel hinges on shattering them. Our primary goal is advancing information processing and communication, but we’re equally thrilled about ambitious ventures—like sending people back in time."
Mody was hired specifically for this kind of moonshot. As part of a select team of scientists, he’d be experimenting with technologies designed to one day send people back in time. Lisa had her eye on Mody because his blend of academic prowess and athletic conditioning made him an ideal fit for the mission. Her directive was to assemble a crew capable of tackling scientific challenges, contributing to engineering solutions, and ultimately testing the systems by traveling back in time themselves. Her recruitment algorithm flagged MMA as a prime athletic qualifier for candidates. Another key criterion was that they shouldn’t be too advanced in their academic careers—Mody, still a year shy of his PhD, struck her as "perfect."
SpaceX relocated its time travel division to Boca Chica, near its spaceport hub. It was during a routine equipment test there that a swarm of FBI agents abruptly cordoned off the site. Lisa was called into the main conference room, where Gardner informed her that her team was shifting to stealth mode and would be transferred to an army base in Wyoming. Some team members, including Mody, were let go due to security clearance issues.
"Both his parents have murky pasts," an FBI agent told Lisa, his tone so cold it made the room chilly.
"The mother was killed by a drug cartel, and the father’s been hiding out in Antarctica ever since. We can’t afford to take a chance on him.”
Lisa immediately pushed back.
"I’m well aware of Mody’s file.” Her expression turning as frigid as the agent’s voice.
"We reviewed it during recruitment, and SpaceX security flagged the same concerns. But we brought him on for exactly that reason. Our plan is to eventually send him on our first intergenerational time-travel mission. As you know, that’s a high-stakes move. The odds of bringing him back without disrupting the time symmetry parameters are less than ideal. Plus, we can’t predict how Mody’s meddling in the past might alter his return trajectory to the present. The risks are steep. According to SpaceX’s human resource algorithm, Mody is the ideal candidate precisely because he’ll be driven to go back and uncover the truth about his mother—that’s his core motivation. If you’re sending someone back to rewrite history, why not pick someone with a personal stake in it? So far, we’ve kept the time travel special ops team on a need-to-know basis. Only a handful of people understand the mission’s true scope and purpose. And, of course, Mody has no idea we already know exactly what happened to his mother." Her icy gaze locked onto Gardner as she made her case.
"Sir, we have high certainty that Mody is the ideal candidate," Lisa pressed.
"Finding a replacement would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. I strongly urge you to reconsider his removal from the mission."
Eventually, the FBI cleared Mody, and the team was relocated to an army base near Buffalo, Wyoming. Even Lisa remained in the dark about the real reason the feds allowed Mody to stay. As it turned out, intergenerational time travel demanded a candidate with no siblings anywhere in their family tree. Neither Mody, his parents, nor their parents had any brothers or sisters. Simbi’s supposed brother, Ashley, wasn’t her biological sibling—he’d been adopted by Simbi’s mother, a fact even Simbi never knew. Mody was poised to become the first human to journey back across multiple generations.
Scientists believed that siblings would muddy the process of returning travelers to their original timeline, heightening the risk of errors. Put simply, sending someone back more than one generation carried an already steep chance of failing to bring them back, and siblings amplified that danger significantly. Mongarthy had published several papers on this, arguing that the entanglement between mother and child made it nearly impossible to calibrate time symmetry parameters for individuals with siblings. The scientific consensus was to start with single-child candidates before venturing into riskier experiments with sibling dynamics. That’s what made Mody such a prime pick: a lone child from a lineage of lone children, equipped with the scientific acumen and physical prowess the mission demanded.
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