In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  “That’s our cue,” Eon spins his hand in the air and points to the door. “Let’s roll.”

  I follow the group down the stairs feeling bulky in my spacesuit and having flashbacks to my time aboard the Diamatra space station. That hadn’t ended well. My other self seems to be thinking the same thing.

  “Can you trust these people?” he whispers.

  “Rixon and Eon? Yeah. Quickly says they’re solid.”

  “Why is Mym with the Eternals?”

  His voice sounds too sincere for me to be critical. I can feel the concern coming through.

  “Long story.”

  The front door to the bar swings open just as we are filing into the jump room. Tucket is beaming as he steps inside the bar and spots us. He’s wearing a different T-shirt than he had on last night, one with a picture of a split open, slightly bruised avocado on the front.

  “Hey, Ben. You’ll never guess what happened to me last night! I went to—hey, where are you guys going?”

  I pause so he can make it over to me. Through the door to the jump room, Eon is already getting Professor Chun set up with her anchor.

  “Hey, Tucket. We’re on a mission here. We think Mym is in port already. We’re going to get her back.”

  “Oh wow! Do you need me to suit up too? Are you going up the Skylift? That’s super rad!”

  “He stays here,” Rixon says. “We’ve got too many people to keep an eye on as it is.”

  Tucket’s smile fades slightly.

  “We’ll be okay, Tucket. You’ve already been a huge help.”

  “Okay . . . Hey, if you bring Mym back today, you should come with me to Machina Libre.”

  “I saw you go in there again last night. What were you doing?”

  “You know how that girl, Mira, was so down on humans? I just hated that she thought we were all like that, you know? I decided to talk to her and explain that humans aren’t really the way she thinks we are. She had never even listened to Avocado Problems before. Or the Beatles! I told her that she can’t just judge all humans on how they are now, you know? There’s all this history and experience to being human, not just the data that she can download. I told her she should come visit history with me sometime, and I could show her how super gnarly the twenty-first century—”

  “Travers! We’re ready for you,” Eon calls from inside the jump room. “We’re on a tight schedule with these anchors. Gotta move.”

  I give Eon a quick thumbs up and turn back to Tucket. “How did she take what you said?”

  “Well, I think she might still hate humans a lot, actually, but she sat and listened to me for a long time. We stayed up all night talking. I think that I made a good impression. I made her laugh. That’s a start, right?”

  “You’re going to see her again?”

  “Oh, yeah. She said she doesn’t mind if I come back in. She promised that she wouldn’t let anyone in there kill me. I think that’s pretty cool.”

  “Really romantic, Tuck.”

  Tucket grins and puts his hands on his hips. “I know. After I get some sleep I think I’m going to go back over there. Do you think I would impress her more if I dressed up like—”

  Rixon is gesturing to me urgently from inside the jump room. “Clock’s ticking, Travers. Let’s move.”

  “Gotta go, Tucket.” I put my gloved fist out, and he bumps it. “Just be you. Okay, man? You’re already the coolest dude I know, just how you are.”

  I step inside the jump room, and Rixon moves to close the door behind me. Tucket gives a final wave before it shuts. He’s smiling at me and leaning to see around the door. “Hasta la vista, Ben!”

  It’s windy atop the Skylift.

  And cold.

  Carson’s strategically-placed anchors have gotten us to a loading platform on deck 107, a ramp for moving cargo pods out to the main elevator. As soon as we arrive, a regulator inside my spacesuit kicks on and begins warming me.

  Carson is waiting for us and hastily guides our group off the landing platform via a gangplank. He’s not wearing a pressure suit, but he does have an oxygen mask on and an insulated jacket. I do my best to not look down as we follow him along the gangway toward the main structure.

  My helmet display shows that this section of the tower is fifteen thousand feet up. There is perhaps another fifty feet of the main Skylift structure above us, topped by a glass dome, but beyond that are only the carbon nanotube tethers running up into the sky and all the way into space. I can see all five of the tethers from here, each stemming from a different wing of the main dome, their tops disappearing into the blue above us.

  “The loading terminal for the climber cars is this way,” Carson says over the coms. “No sign of the Eternals yet.”

  We move quickly through the industrial section of the Skylift. There aren’t many other people out on the loading pads due to the limited oxygen, but we do pass some synth workers and robotic drone forklifts that are unimpeded by the altitude. The view looking down is daunting—nothing but cloud tops and the blue of the Gulf of Mexico far below.

  The center dome of the Skylift has an area that is kept at a higher pressure for passengers and, once inside, Carson pulls his mask off. Rixon and Eon likewise remove their helmets. The pair of them are forced to input their law enforcement identification at a security checkpoint when the scanners pick up on their weapons, but once through, Eon directs us onto an escalator. “Main loading for passengers is on the next level up. The last passenger security checkpoint was two floors down, but they’ve added security up here as well to help us out.”

  Professor Chun chimes in as we glide upward. “I’ve purchased tickets to Earthrim for all of us. You three are booked on a trip up lift number one later tonight, just so we have proper clearance on this level. Some of my people are here to help out. ASCOTT’s priority is tracking the Labyrinth weapon, but they’ll assist in Mym’s recovery too. Harry and I are taking one of the next lifts up to the space docks now in case anyone has already slipped through. We want to be on hand when the Starfire pulls into port.”

  Through the glass ceiling of the domed room we’ve ascended into, I can see one of the elevator tethers and a climber car that has just launched up it. A bright red glow illuminates the bottom as it flies up the tether.

  “Do they have some kind of rocket engine?” I ask.

  “Targeted laser propulsion,” Eon explains.

  We pass into a central boarding hub with five spokes shooting off it. Each one leads to a different elevator tether. Unlike the outside loading docks, the hub is bustling with activity. There are synths guiding cargo pods and trans-humans shuffling in groups toward the two docks labeled for passengers. Each spoke of the terminal has its own waiting area with generic lobby chairs that look every bit as uncomfortable as they were in my century. I’m surprised to see a pair of Jedi having a light saber fight in front of one of the terminal windows. The noise of their light sabers clashing carries across the waiting area till a woman seated near them reprimands them. The Jedi drop their metaspace identities and revert back to a couple of kids in neon-colored jumpsuits—disappointed that their play has been cut short.

  Pressure suits are apparently required for everyone using the space elevator, but since most of the humans walking around are tourists headed to Earthrim for vacations, the pressure suits in sight are sleek, minimalist outfits with trendy colors and meta accessories. I feel a bit out of place in my full spacesuit and helmet, but there are enough other people hauling around spacewalk gear that no one pays us much attention.

  A man dressed in an all black pressure suit eases over to our group and speaks to Professor Chun. “We’ve got ten agents spread out here in the terminal and another ten waiting for you up top at the docks. No sign of the Labyrinth yet.”

  Professor Chun gives him a nod and sends him back into the crowd where he does an unconvincing job of looking like a tourist.

  “We’ll need to spread out for now,” Eon says. “Anyone headed up any of the
tethers has to pass through this terminal at some point, so if we’re going to spot them, this is the place. If you see Mym or any of the Eternals, connect with the others, and Rixon and I will intercept. Ben has seen the most of them in person, so if you see any suspicious candidates, flash an image to his heads-up.” He looks to me. “You can confirm for us, right?”

  “Okay.” I churn through the memories of the different Eternals I’ve seen. It doesn’t help that a lot of them have been masked or showed up in the dark. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good,” Eon replies. “We’ve alerted Skylift authorities about the kidnapping as well, so security is on alert.” He hands Carson one of his stun weapons, and Rixon somewhat reluctantly follows suit by handing one to me.

  “ASCOTT has people monitoring the security cams too,” Professor Chun adds. “They’ll contact me in the event of suspicious activity. Stay sharp and we’ll nab these bastards.”

  I tuck the stun gun out of sight in a cargo pouch of my suit and take a position between the passages for lifts 4 and 5. The heads-up display on my helmet zooms and magnifies on command, so I’m able to run through all of the faces entering my view very rapidly. So far, none of them look familiar. I take the time to degravitize one of the anchors for getting back to Rixon’s so that I’ll be ready for a quick escape if we spot Mym.

  The anchors Rixon has given us are all single-use, plain orange cubes fabricated from a 3D printer with the coordinates etched directly onto them. I enter the coordinates for the one I’ve chosen into my chronometer, then go back to scanning the terminal.

  Doctor Quickly and Professor Chun head into passage three and, a few minutes later, they report that their climber car is leaving for the space docks. Through the glass dome, I watch the climber launch itself into the blue.

  “Are we going up that?” my other self whispers.

  “Shhh,” I mutter.

  “What did you say, Travers?” Rixon says.

  “Nothing.”

  I mute my com link.

  “You can’t just spout things out,” I whisper. “What are you doing?” I can feel my other self surfacing more inside my head.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re doing. ”

  “We need to spot Mym so we can grab her and jump back out before these guys can take her out of reach.”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean, then what? And then we go home and get away from all these crazy nut jobs.”

  “What about me?”

  I consider what he’s asking. I can hear the tension in his voice. My voice. He’s scared.

  “I don’t know what to do about that yet.”

  “Look, it’s getting harder to stick around. Zurvan is bad news. He has my memories. If you keep shutting me out, I don’t know how much longer I can last here. It’s getting . . . more real.”

  “What’s more real?” I ask.

  “Eternity.”

  The single word brings a wave of emotion with it. For a moment I can feel what he means—a sort of vastness at the far side of his mind.

  I keep scanning the room. Luckily, there are enough other people having conversations via the metaspace that talking to myself doesn’t seem out of place.

  “Look, I get that you’re me and everything, and I know that you don’t like the current situation, but I don’t think we can keep doing this once we get back. Going around talking to ourselves here is one thing, but we can’t keep sharing a head like this at home. It isn’t normal.”

  “What am I supposed to do then?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s deal with one problem at a time.”

  Eon’s voice cuts through my helmet speakers. “Look alive, gentlemen. Just got a security report that a group of unidentified people have deployed out of a cargo pod loader next level down. Could be our targets.”

  Eon and Rixon cut through the crowd toward the main escalators. Eon signals a muscled security guard who nods and follows him toward the escalator.

  Carson chimes in. “Are we supposed to go with—”

  “Hold your position,” Eon replies. “Rixon and I will—” Eon is cut off as the security guard suddenly tackles him from behind. Someone screams and, as the crowd parts, I see one of Professor Chun’s ASCOTT agents on the ground at the far side of the terminal with one of the security guards standing over her prone form.

  “Security is compromised!” I shout into my helmet microphone before realizing it’s still muted. By the time I’ve resolved that, the situation has become clear to everyone anyway.

  Trans-human security guards have begun battling ASCOTT agents across the terminal. It’s as though a switch has been flipped and the previously calm security guards have come unhinged.

  Passengers and terminal staff are fleeing in all directions, making it hard to concentrate on anything else, but through the chaos I see what I’m looking for. A small cluster of people are making their way toward gate 4 from the main entrance. They’ve forgone their robes and hoods in the interest of blending in, but I recognize the v-shaped hairline and cold stare of Mr. Longcase leading the group. Two of them are carrying a heavy rectangular box between them.

  Rixon has drawn his weapon and aims it toward another pair of security guards storming his way. Due to the guards’ sheer size, it takes multiple blasts from the stun weapon to slow them down. They retreat behind a kiosk to trade fire with Rixon. Eon is back on his feet and pummeling the guard who tackled him with his bare hands.

  Looking past Longcase and his chosen henchmen, I spot two smaller figures among the group. One I recognize as the wizened face of Lord Elgin and the other has a helmet with the face shield completely blacked out. Elgin is hauling her forward by the arm.

  Mym.

  Mym is walking strangely, and I realize it’s because her wrists have been linked to the waist of her pressure suit. It’s a less conspicuous way to bind her hands, but effective nonetheless.

  “I see her! I’m going for her!” I call into the helmet mic. I don’t have much of a plan, but I keep my anchor ready and head for the group. Carson is cutting through the terminal from my right. There are perhaps a dozen people in the cluster around Mym, but I only need to get a hand on her to jump her out. A man in the lead shouts something in a language I don’t understand, and the whole group comes to a stop. I pull the stun gun loose and prepare to attack.

  Rixon and Eon have successfully suppressed the security guards who had attacked them, and it seems like the ASCOTT agents have been mostly victorious as well. We form a circle around the cluster of Eternals with our weapons raised. None of the Eternals appear to be armed. They are simply standing still in a circle around Elgin and Mym.

  “Give up the girl,” Eon shouts.

  “And the weapon,” one of the ASCOTT agents adds.

  Longcase is the only person who moves, and it’s merely a twitch of his mouth. A flicker of scorn on an otherwise impassive face.

  “RIGHT NOW!” Eon says. He takes a step closer to Longcase.

  The Eternals stay silent. Waiting.

  Mym cocks her head. “Ben? Are you there?”

  “Mym, I’m—” Something collides with the back of my leg and I stagger. I spin around with my weapon at the ready and find myself pointing it at one of the little kids who had been playing at being a Jedi earlier. The little girl of perhaps ten is staring at me, but something is wrong with her eyes. They’re flickering in her head. She opens her mouth and screams.

  The terminal comes alive with movement. Passengers, formerly cowering behind rows of chairs or lying prone on the floor, spring to life and sprint toward us. The little girl who screamed fixes her glare on my face and charges me.

  “Agh!” I squeeze the trigger on the stun gun and send her sprawling backward onto the floor. The terminal erupts with violence.

  The ASCOTT agent closest to me gets swarmed by two men in yellow jumpsuits. Eon blasts the first two Eternals that lunge at him, but the third uses a limber spin kick
to send the weapon flying from his hand. Rixon gets hit from behind by an old lady, and by the time he has shoved her away, one of the Eternals is on top of him.

  The static silence of the Eternals turns to fluid motion as they stream forward, cutting through the constricting crowd. I get my stun gun aimed at one of the men blocking my path to Mym, but before I can fire, I’m tackled by a teenage boy with crazed eyes and purple hair. The two of us crash to the floor in a heap, and by the time I’ve gotten the upper hand, Elgin and the Eternals have almost reached the gate.

  It seems like nearly every passenger left in the terminal is a consciousness-shifted Eternal now intent on impeding us. The few who aren’t Eternals are cowering in corners or shepherding children toward the exits. No one is trying to stop them. A quick glance around shows me that our ASCOTT allies are massively overwhelmed. I consider trying to make a jump back in time to get out of this mess and buy myself more time, but I have no idea when this place might be safe to jump to. I may not get back in time. I double-check that I still have Rixon’s jump anchor and go after Mym instead. If I only have one shot at leaving, I’m not going without her.

  I stun the first six people I encounter, but when I try for a seventh, an indicator on my weapon tells me it’s recharging. I’m forced to shove and pry my way through the passengers attempting to keep me from the gate. I punch at least three people, one of which I’m fairly sure is old enough to be someone’s grandfather. I don’t have time to feel bad about it because Mym has been dragged through the gate to tether 4 and has vanished out of sight. I finally break free of the crowd and sprint after them.

  The biggest downside to space helmets is that they are total crap when it comes to peripheral vision. Like when you run through a doorway and get blindsided by a big trans-human dude with a bad attitude. Where helmets come in handy is when the big dude slams you so hard into the window of the catwalk that the window fractures. They also help keep your skull intact during his repeated attempts to shove you through said window.

  The security guard who has waylaid me is big—easily fifty pounds heavier than me, and I get the impression that his hobbies mostly consist of lifting heavy things or perhaps crushing sturdy objects with his bare hands. I’m doubtful that transcendental meditation has been high on his priority list so he’s likely not an Eternal. When he wrenches the stun gun from my grasp and hurls it out the hole he’s made in the window, it dawns on me that his enthusiasm probably has much more to do with the cash that Guy and Lawrence promised as a payoff than any real loyalty to the Eternals. Whatever his motivation, he’s nothing if not determined and, despite my ineffective resistance and verbal protestations, I come to a sickening realization. He’s going to throw me out the window.