Ryan Time

by Craig Robertson

  Sachiko shook her head. “Who knows? If and when it does, we'll have to play it by ear.”

  “Figured as much.”

  “Now, anything else that weighs heavily upon your worrywart mind?” he asked.

  “Ah, yes. I'm not sure how to say this.”

  “Then just say it.”

  “Okay—”

  “What? Here, let me cover my ears and you say it.”

  “My poop is missing.”

  “You know, if you blindside a friend one time too many, ya might just lose that friend,” he remarked with a chuckle.

  “I am so glad I no longer have that problem,” state Sapale, most seriously. “Missing poop is a never-ending torment for you fleshies.”

  “I'm serious.”

  Tank took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I assumed it had to do with the unique atmosphere on the S-Squared.”

  “Yours, too?”

  “My bucket is alway emptier than biologic history would predict.”

  “And that hadn't struck you as … odd?” Sachiko responded.

  “Not if I ignored it fully.”

  “You are such a guy.”

  “It's so the opposite of nice to have two men's men aboard,” groused Sapale.

  “Thank you. Guilty as charged.”

  “Where could our waste be going? Seriously,” Sachiko pressed.

  “Beats me. Let's just both keep tabs and be scientifically observant. K?”

  “K.”

  “Pretty soon, I think we're going to have to head back to the TSR and top ourselves off,” Sapale changed the subject.

  “No time like the present,” Tank replied smiling.

  More big surprises were actually most unwelcome by then. That, however, didn't stop them from raining down on the crew. The floor of the TSR directly under the spigot they'd jerry-rigged had grown up to insert itself into the orifice of the sprout.

  “Now, there's something you don't see everyday,” Tank muttered under his breath.

  “The floor grew to where time comes out. That'll be kind of hard to explain away.”

  “Bad floor construction? Bulging water damage under the carpet?” he offered.

  “There is no carpet,” Sapale said flatly.

  “I know.”

  “Let me see if I can dislodge it,” Sachiko said, stepping forward.

  “Be careful,” warned Sapale.

  “What, of the floor?”

  “Just be careful.”

  She placed both hands on the floor spike and tried to move it. She had to lean in hard, but the pointy thing bent, then popped free. Almost as soon as she released it, the peak receded back into the deck, where it belonged.

  “Fascinating,” said Tank.

  “Yeah, I agree. The floor's like, alive,” marveled Sachiko.

  “Wait, kiddo, that's it.”

  “What's it? What did I even say?”

  “The floor is alive. Honey, the ship is a living being. It was trying to tap into the time supply. I'll bet nickels to navy beans it's whose been recycling our waste too,” declared Tank.

  “The floor ate my poop? Gross.”

  “It's hungry.”

  “The Minnow is hungry?”

  “I'd bet good money on it.”

  “I agree,” added Sapale. “Many advanced-race ships are sentient, and semi-alive.”

  “So the Edoozers travel the universe in a ship that burns time?”

  “And we've have them time-locked, so they haven't fed her lately.”

  “No, wait. The ship should be time-locked, too. How can it drink from the spout and eat poop if it's time-locked?” Sachiko puzzled.

  “Who says it is?” responded Sapale. “We know nothing of this new world of physical time.”

  “Good point. Just because the drivers are asleep doesn't mean the ship has to be,” agreed Tank.

  “I think it's sort of cool,” remarked Sachiko.

  “You would. You're a science nerd, like our Toño,” observed Sapale.

  “Hey, let's feed the beast,” Tank suggested, energetically.

  “How much do we feed a massive intergalactic spaceship, Dr. Tank?”

  “Beats me. Let's just open the spigot and see what happens.”

  And that's what he did. Up until then, we'd placed our mouths over the escaping time energy. This time, Tank let it flow freely. Darn if it didn't spew toward the deck, start to disperse, but then was redirected to the floor. It sure seemed like the vessel itself was lapping it up.

  “How much will you give it?”

  “I don't know. If it stops absorbing it, I'll stop releasing it.”

  “And if it doesn't? We need that stuff, too,” mentioned Sapale.

  “I have a feeling there's a lot of time in this bottle,” replied Tank.

  After fifteen minutes, it did seem like the floor wasn't catching the time stream as avidly as it had been. The time sphere certainly didn't look emptier. Tank shut the flow off.

  “I guess we'll know if it wants more if the floor reaches up again.”

  “Sure. Whoa, Tank,” exclaimed Sachiko.

  “What,” his eyes rocketed around, looking for trouble.

  “You know our nearly impossible task of learning Edoozer tech?

  “I seem to recall something of our mission.”

  “I think it just got a hell of a lot easier. We don't need to learn their language or understand their controls.”

  “We don't?” he answered, dubiously.

  “No. We just need to figure out how to win their ship over.”

  “Ah, we don't know that's possible,” responded Sapale.

  “But if it was, it'd sure speed things along,” replied Sachiko.

  “It certainly would,” agreed Tank.

  SEVENTEN

  Time Maker-ppp was unsettled. It was the time master of the clan. To be at less than full ease was foreign to it, impossible … unimaginable. It ruled time. Yes, the body makers ruled their own clan ships, but it ruled the one thing more important than clan ships—the time maker lorded over time itself. Everywhere. Everywhen.

  But the time maker did not feel in control, in dominion over its time. Normally, time crashed around the time maker, as if time was water at the base of Niagara Falls, and the time maker was the rocks, below. Now, it faced an uncertainty. A tiny portion of time was a thick syrup, pouring past it so slowly, it could barely know that time moved. Or, possibly—and this was an absurd thought—perhaps it didn't even, in some tiny region, move at all. Was this another curse of the inept body maker's attempt at personal vengeance over the fleas of that planet called Earth? It would pay the highest price if that was reality. It would receive no more time-energy from the clan trove. Not one second more.

  The time maker made to move, to investigate the source of its unpleasantness. But a part of it, a tiny part, would not hear its desires. It was stuck like a thought in time. But time never stopped, unless it was no-time. Incorrect, it reflected. No-time was not stopped. It was not, nothingness. It struggled back to the first principles it learned when young. Could time stop? Certainly. Forward, backward, and arrested were all equally possible, permissible. But what stopped time? It hadn't. No one other than the time maker would dare. That would be the foulest sacrilege. The entire subclan of one performing such a perversity would be deleted, throughout all time. Yes, that subclan would answer harshly to Time Maker-ppp, if it had. Time was serious. Time was never toyed with. Time was all that mattered.

  But the viscous ooze that time had become, in that tiny backwater, deadened its mind. It struggled to meditate on the reality it was now a captive of. But, resistance was futile. It elected to rest in time, for a time. Then it would repair time. And deletions would follow. Oh, yes. Deletions would follow.

  EIGHTEEN

  Okay, first clue something was amiss? I didn't see the White House, of the late 1860s. The second clue? The mastodon standing about ten meters in front of me.

  It was a single female American Mastodon. How h
id I know the big beasty was a girl? She had a very young baby by her side. Oh, joy. I was about to be mama-beared. She trumpeted loudly, you know, almost like she was really pissed. Then, naturally, because I really needed and deserved it, she charged. Did I mention how very big mastodon's tusks are? If not, write this down. They are not big. They are enormous. The fact that I had the firepower to take her out was a no-go. She was acting instinctively to protect her baby. Killing her would be a dickish thing to do. And, I am many non-positive things, but a dick is not one of them.

  There was no cover to be had. A few trees were off to the right, but she'd splinter them, shortly before she splintered me. Probe fibers it was. I caught her by her really big head, and slowed her to a stop, quickly enough. She began thrashing, in a hateful panic. She was likely to hurt herself, or die of fright, if I didn't act quickly and correctly. I could likely place her to sleep, but that would leave junior unprotected. That would mean I'd have to wait around until she finished her beauty sleep. Yeah, at that point, I was thinking she'd trumpet loudly and charge me.

  I lifted her off the ground. Thank you, Deavoriath technology, for the umpteen millionth time. There was a gentle rise to the left. With any luck (no giggles out there) I could find a barrier to separate us that she couldn't easily surmount. There. A fast moving creek, cascading down the far side of the hillock. The water was half-rapids, half waterfall, dropping twenty meters in a very short run. Perfect. As quickly as a robot carrying a mastodon could, I scrambled up the slope, angling to the head of the fast water. Then I had to set her down, so I could leap to the far shore. I was not Superman. I only felt like him.

  Once across, holding her in place, I climbed the wet rocks, so I ended up fifteen meters above her, on the other side of a significant barrier of water. Fortunately, baby was trailing behind mama, bellyaching the entire time. Trust me on this. The baby's cute factor dropped rapidly as it continued to protest. By the time I released mama, she bellowed angrily, but she fairly quickly realized I was not an acute threat. I trotted away, and she calmed.

  That's when I stopped to ponder why I had missed the Lincoln White House by such a ridiculous margin. Weird. We'd all made synchronous time-dives, forward and backward, like old pros. Then I try it on my own, no problema. But, now I'm Ug the Caveman. Was this even the DC area, one hundred thousand years earlier? I scanned the topography, comparing it to various records I had of the same area, in modern times. Sure enough, it was the general DC landscape. Hey. I could buy some real estate, become mega-rich. Wait, no local government to record the transfer, plus, what the hell. After Jupiter was done with the place, what good would it be?

  Stay on task, Ryan. Think. Why'd you miss the time mark? Crap Cola on the rocks, what if I missed on the getting home part, too? What if I leapt to the East Coast in, oh, say, 2154, when there no longer was an East Coast? That would be embarrassing.

  Oh, well, I wasn't one to dwell on a thing. I was in a place where I couldn't secure the needed supplies, I needed to return to the Minnow. Now was as good a time as any to see what …

  Alright. Just exactly what I needed. A band of Maltonian hexaplexers was lugging the carcass of some hairy mammal toward their ship. I don't know how I missed them, earlier. Their smell is like an ex-wife. It only gets meaner, it always bothers you more, and you can't avoid it because she's just that vindictive. The portion of the brains allotted amongst Maltonian hexaplexers to the sense of smell is minuscule. If it wasn't. they'd have all killed themselves, and the species would never have evolved.

  The last time I ran into a band of them was just after the Adamant War. There was a intergalactic victory celebration, and they just had to come. In spite of triple plastic, laminar flow tents, venting into industrial strength detox units, the smell around their pavilion caused nausea and vomiting up to a mile away. And what the hell were they doing in Earths past? They were an ancient society, so these could be legitimate time-locals doing what they had, originally. Or, they could be time-mutants, like me. That would be very bad. It was Ryan time.

  Turning my olfactory sensors off, and approaching them from upwind, nonetheless, I got very close to them without being noticed. In fact, they were trying to stuff a medium sized mastodon through their main hatch. Why on earth they wanted a dead, medium sized mastodon was beyond me. The tusks were making it hard. If they angled it one way, the rump wouldn't make the turn. Another way, the tusks hooked the bulkhead.

  I switched my translator output to the main Maltonian hexaplexerian dialect, at least the one they spoke a long time in the future. “Hello, my eating companions,” I greeted. That was their equivalent for yo dudes.

  Talk about scaring the bejeebers out of someone. I thought they would explode, in unison. That actually would have been a sight worth taking in. But, alas, instead, the biggest and ugliest one spun on me. “How are ****** here? This ******** planet has no *******.”

  Partial translation. More great. My algorithms were not nearly as quick a study as Al's. It would take several sentences to even begin making meaningful updates. Hopefully dude wouldn't hit me with his mastodon, before I became fluent.

  “I come in peace. I am lost and wonder if you know where Pismo Beach is? Help a brother out.” Hey, I was biding time, using filler-speak. What I said was probably going to confuse the hell out of them, no matter what I said.

  “You speak **** like a ********.”

  Hey, the others laughed. That had to be good, right?

  He stood to his full height, which was likely not a good change. “I will ******** your **** *****, scorned of the great god Celmaniferos.”

  Hmm. Well, at least they hadn't changed gods in two billion years. In my time, they said that, like every other sentence.

  “Scorned of the great god Celmaniferos, I am. I have a brother. He is you.”

  Nice. All but one of the bunch laughed their asses off. Guess which one did not?

  He was shamed, so he couldn't very well act attack me. When your buddies are rolling on the ground, laughing, you just look lame charging off into battle. Also, if your back up is on their backs, they're not very effective.

  “I am no enemy, friends,” I said, seriously. “I come to talk. Nothing more. I want to talk.”

  The guy whose chain I'd yanked puffed out, even more. “You are no friend. Leave, before I gut you like this pallylama.” He gestured to the mastodon.

  Outstanding. My translation gear was working well.

  I pointed to the dead pachyderm. “Is that a hunt, for meat?”

  “Why would I tell you, swiglet piss?”

  Not sure what a swiglet is, but I'm thinking it's not their equivalent of a fine stallion.

  “Because, friend, I asked. This world is primitive. Aside from you, the other travelers I see do not look primitive. I wonder to myself, why is this?”

  Another figure, also a male, put an arm in front of the big-mouthed one, pushed him back, and stepped forward. “You should not waste your time arguing with my boiler attendant. I am Overseer Jij-kip-vik of the Desterland, at your service.” He stepped back one step. “Please be my guest, as I can tell you are a unit of distinction.”

  Oh hell, no. Not getting on these asswipes' ship. If I'm going to get shanghaied, it'll be to a race of Amazons with skimpy rawhide garments. Plus, if I entered the confines of their ship, I'd have to replace my ploy-alloy skin. The stink'd never come out, naturally. These guys were seriously like walking, talking komodo dragon's mouths.

  “You are more kind than a lord should be. I am not worthy. I am but the curious traveler.” I bowed, deeply. I have no idea why I was saying or doing what I was. I guess I'm just fundamentally goofy. “All I asked of your overseership is the answer to my question.”

  “What am I to make of a stranger who calls us friend, yet he won't join us in our home for a meal, between friends?”

  Well, jocko, for one thing, you won't make dinner out of me.

  “You might call that person a religious man.”

  Huh? I d
o believe I was off the reservation of right reason. Maybe I was suffering from hypothermia?

  “Religious?” he grinned. “We are as pious as the next phramp, more than most.”

  Phramp was what the Maltonian hexaplexers called themselves. It was like Earthers saying they were human.

  “We have the finest shrine to the God Without a Name you will ever find.”

  Okay, my creep-o-meter was redlining. This dude wanted me on his ship. I knew the Maltonian hexaplexers of my time were as social and welcoming as hairless razorbacks from Hillbilly Ville. No reason to assume assholishness was not rooted deeply in their gene pool.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked, cupping my ear.

  The majordomo looked to his crew, confused.

  “We heard nothing.”

  “There. I heard it again.”

  The bunch of them swayed in animated confusion. “What is it we should hear?”

  “This.” I turned and ran. Over my shoulder, I shouted, “The sound of me getting the hell away from you smelloids.”

  If they weren't offended by my stupid ploy, the smell reference was sure to stick in their craws. That's what I wanted. Why? Because, as the most odorously offensive species in the galaxy, they were, of course, very sensitive on the topic. Before they mingled in space, who knew if their BO was an issue. But, ever since they journeyed to the stars, the easiest and quickest way to piss them off was to mention the unmentionable.

  From behind, I heard, “Get him,” screamed by the boss.

  Good. They were falling into my little trap. Now, if it only worked, this was going to be epic. If both my legs were severed and only one arm still worked, I could outrun a phramp. I could log roll up a cliff face faster than they could sprit down a steep hill. That established, I had to make it look like one was catching up to me, without being obvious. Hey, it's not easy being spectacular. Try it, someday, and see. Oh, wait. Most people can't do my kind spectacular in their wildest dreams.

  Along with more trips and face-plants than would seem likely, I “ran” slowly enough for the fastest phramp—oxymoron in motion—to draw into arm's length. Big, hairy, stinky, arm's length. He collared me, and I let my legs buckle. As he fell onto me, I arched my back and arms, so I flipped, ass-over-tea-kettle, effectively launching him into low Earth orbit. Bingo. I eliminated one of them while still appearing inept.