Kzine Issue 7

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  JEN 3

  We’re in the same place again! The same bloody place! I thought we were going to do a random jump! It’s not very random this, is it?

  JEN

  …damn right…

  JEN 2

  …pretty much gone nowhere…

  SAM

  Well, technically you spanning to somewhere in the near vicinity is as random as ending up in the Napoleonic War or a pyramid in Egypt or…

  JEN 3

  Technically I don’t give a shit! We’re never going to get out of here! How are we going to get out of here?

  JEN 2

  …pretty damn quick…

  SAM

  I’m working on that right now, bear with me a few moments.

  JEN 3

  That’s me over there again. Up in the bloody tree. Look at the little bastards go.

  JEN

  …sure you’ve sent them?

  SAM

  Remember what we talked about earlier, it’s very dangerous to approach earlier versions of yourself.

  JEN 3

  They should have jumped by now or spanned or whatever you call it. We were gone by this point. Those bloody things are going to get them. Us. Whatever. we’re going over there, they need help.

  SAM

  Stay right where you are, Mrs. Hardy!

  JEN 3

  No chance! That’s us over there and we’re going to die! If we die there then we never came here because we’re already dead, right?

  SAM

  That’s not strictly true, you’re on a different timeline now…

  JEN 3

  What do you mean different? We’re all in the same place at the same time! Oh God, we’re going to fall out of that tree…

  The line is muted.

  SAM

  Silly bitch is going to fuck us all, what do I do, what do I do… Fuck it.

  The customer is taken off mute.

  SAM

  I’m going to get all of you out of there Mrs. Hardy. I have your co-ordinates and the co-ordinates of your prior selves. I know how to solve this.

  JEN 3

  Well you haven’t done a good job of it so far!

  SAM

  All I need to do is move the machine and not you, Mrs. Hardy. With any luck it’ll all be over quick. (To Alice.) I’m going to need you to do a hard reset, Alice.

  ALICE

  Bloody hell, not again, you know this wears out the Timefibres.

  The line is muted.

  SAM

  I know, I don’t need the lecture again! Just go set it up, please!

  ALICE

  This is the last time, and you know there’s got to be a report…

  JEN 3

  I’m giving you ten seconds then I’m going, fuck the consequences!

  SAM

  Only call centre job in the world where you can do anything like this. Tidy up some loose ends, then start again.

  JEN 3

  Oh God, the bloody machine’s disappeared without them. You’ve left them behind, you’ve left them behind! What the hell are you doing?

  The line is unmuted.

  SAM

  Recalling faulty equipment, that’s all.

  JEN 3

  They’ve got her, they’ve got us! Oh my God, what have you done?

  JEN 2

  (Doppler effect.) …disappeared! Why did you do that? Send it…

  SAM

  Mrs. Hardy number two, you’re next.

  JEN 3

  Christ, there’s another me over there, you’ve done the same thing to them! You’ve done the same fucking thing to them!

  A lot of screams and screeches are invading the line.

  SAM

  Guess who’s next.

  JEN 3

  They’re getting ripped apart! I’m getting ripped apart! Oh you bastard. I see what you’re doing. You’re a murderer. I hope you rot in hell you murdering bastard.

  White noise rushes the line, drowning out Jen’s accusations.

  SAM

  It’s not murder if it never happened. Alice, I’ve reclaimed the replicated equipment. Do the reset now.

  ALICE

  There. Done.

  SAM

  Bang go my stats for another month. Are we alright? We good to go?

  ALICE

  Yep, it’s like nothing happened. Call should be coming through from her any moment now.

  A click, a beep, and a call comes through.

  SAM

  Thank you for calling the Time Spanners Inc. technical helpdesk, you’re speaking to Sam. Can I take your name and account number please?

  JEN

  There’s bloody dinosaurs everywhere!

  There’s a terrible screeching racket to be heard in the background…

  End of transcript.

  Classroom hints: don’t dive straight into the preaching! Give the trainees a few moments to take all of this in. By this session (7) they should be taking in the seriousness of what they’ve just heard. Now would be an excellent time to go back over the do’s and dont’s of time travel technical help (see session 2).

  Make it clear that this was recorded on the call floor which they will very soon be joining. Divide into groups of three, ask them to devise a powerpoint presentation showing the call flow as occurred within the recording, and another demonstrating what they believe to be the correct choices.

  If no one group gets this right, perform reset to start of session. Remember, this issue was not as easily resolved as Sam and Alice believed in the transcript. The random jump should still be considered as a dangerous technique and only to be used as an absolute last resort. Remind trainees of the Law of Declining Randomisation. This rare anomaly resulted in a pair of velociraptors, near to the jump event instigated by Sam, being catapulted to a part of history they had no business being in. The removal of dinosaurs from Roman Britain took several boffins, many attempts and millions out of Time Spanners Inc.‘s bank account. The company doesn’t need another Sam!

  Final note: make light of Alice’s comments concerning the wearing down of the Time Fibres. We certainly want the students to avoid abusing such techniques as random jumps and Fibre Weaving, but we don’t need them to know the true extent of the damage. Let’s leave it to our boffins to find a fix before we mention things that could lose us our jobs!

  KID SISTER

  by Forrest Roy Johnson

  I turned my radio on, music blasting to cover the road sound and rattle and hum of my crappy little Ford Escort. I had just exited the freeway onto what could only charitably be called a highway leading west to Pedoka, Minnesota, population 2900 and dropping with every retired farmer that keeled over in a nursing home and every graduating class that scattered with the four winds in search of literally anything other than their hometown. A few low clouds to the west looked like they’d hold rain, but otherwise everything seemed clear and boring. Well, except for the exploded hay bale that took up a good chunk of the right lane of the two-lane road.

  Welcome back, said western Minnesota.

  An hour or so later, I pulled into my parents’ driveway, saw their dog, Rusty, through the sparse grove. He was hunkered down by the front steps gnawing on a leg. A full-on deer’s leg. Wood smoke puffed from the chimney of my dad’s shop behind the house. He was probably sawing or planing or whatever the hell it was he did in there. (After almost two decades of spending winter days out there with him, the extent of my carpentry skills were still demolition and clean-up.) Mom saw me from the kitchen window and waved as I stepped out of the car. Rusty waddled over and started to lick my hand.

  ‘Gah! Beat it, Dog!’

  Rusty wagged his tail harder.

  I kept bare skin out of tongue’s reach and went inside. ‘Hey Mom.’

  ‘Hey you.’ She met me in the entryway and hugged me, her face squishing into me at armpit level. ‘How was the drive?’

  ‘Mm, fine. Uneventful.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah. Dad
out back?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Gonna go say hi.’

  Rusty ignored me on the way out, too focused on the leg. I opened the door to Dad’s shop and got slapped in the face with dry heat and the scent of sawdust, wood glue, and beer. ‘Whoo! At least you keep warm.’

  Dad looked up from his workbench where he was wiping a drip of glue from a small shelf. ‘Hello.’

  ‘How’s the new batch?’

  He held up a brown bottle with a murky, thick liquid inside. ‘Better than the last one.’ The man hadn’t drank store-bought beer in four years. No sir, all home-brew for Bill Anderson. Tasted like moldy hay mixed with misguided enthusiasm. He offered me one.

  ‘Eh, no thanks. Whatcha got there?’

  ‘Your mother wanted something to set her junk on, so she commissioned me.’

  ‘Nice. Oh, do you want Rusty munching on a deer leg?’

  ‘Agh! He got another one? Had one a few days ago, puked it up all over the damn kitchen.’ He opened up the shop door. ‘Rusty! Giddoverhere!’ The white-muzzled, obese black lab trotted over. ‘Drop it.’ He did. Dad picked up the leg, realized he was holding a bit of dead animal, grimaced, and tossed it in the garbage. ‘Big sucker, that was. See the size of them hooves?’

  ‘Honestly, I have no idea how big ‘big’ is when it comes to disembodied deer limbs.’

  ‘Musta died in the woods, maybe out in the Refuge. Dog is gonna get himself killed he keeps goin over there.’ The Eathonka State Wildlife Refuge was just on the other side of the county road from ye olde homestead. ‘Specially if your sister don’t slow herself down. She’ll schmuck him right in the driveway.’

  ‘Annie’s only had her license for a month.’

  Dad nodded. ‘Gonna be payin her own insurance soon, too. Damned if I’m gonna pay those premiums.’

  As if to emphasize the point, I heard a sliding crunch on the gravel driveway followed by a thud and ‘Oh shit!’ My beautiful baby sister was home.

  She stood half out of her car, phone in hand. Her dumpy Taurus had impacted my crappy Escort at low velocity and left a smear of white paint on my otherwise undamaged bumper. I rubbed a thumb over it. ‘You know better than to text when you’re driving.’

  She blushed. ‘I wasn’t really driving. It doesn’t count if you’re on private property.’

  ‘Not gonna argue with you, kid. Just don’t frickin do it again. Especially when your awesome brother is coming home for the weekend and it causes you to crash into his one and only car.’

  ‘Next time Erick’s here I’ll keep that in mind.’

  ‘Pah! I’m twice as cool as Erick, and triple the hip.’ I grinned at her. ‘So other than developing dangerous driving habits, what’ve you been up to?’

  ‘Not much.’ She got out of her car and bearhugged me. ‘You have a girlfriend yet?’

  ‘What do you mean, yet? I’ve been single for less than a year.’

  ‘Too long, according to Grandma. As far as she’s concerned, you shoulda been married and making babies for five years by now.’

  ‘If she’d had her way, I’d have married Jess and my life would have a lot more flying objects and emotional abuse than it already does, so Grandma can mind her own damn business.’

  ‘Look, I want to be an auntie. You need to go make some babies.’

  ‘Oookay. Good talking to you sis. Goin inside now.’

  Thelma Louise Anderson - named after her two grandmothers - preferred Annie. She was, according to my parents, ‘an unexpected blessing.’ Her college fund was started with the money from the settlement with the doctor’s office (where they didn’t tie the tubes quite tight enough), and her two older brothers kicked the crap out of anyone who dared use the word ‘accident’ around her. Almost ten years younger than me and nine than Erick, she had the wonderful advantage of big brothers when she was little and no big brothers when she hit junior high. All those dreams of harassing and torturing potential boyfriends came to naught when I moved to the Cities.

  We crowded into Mom’s kitchen - Dad, Annie, and me - and poked around for goodies until she kicked us out, citing a need for working space, and suggested that Annie and I go for a walk somewhere, it’s nice out. We agreed. Our route took us from the end of the driveway, a quarter mile west and a half mile north, along county roads. We were looking out at a copse a couple hundred yards into the Refuge, commenting on the barely budded trees, when we saw a black dog trotting across the grassland.

  ‘Great, here comes Rusty,’ Annie said.

  He turned his head our way and let out a single ‘Whuff!’ by way of greeting and disappeared into a patch of tall grass. A minute later he emerged, tail wagging, a fresh chunk of deer carcass in his mouth.

  ‘Oh my God, is that a head?’ Not sure if Annie was mortified or amused. Both, probably.

  And yes, it was the deer’s head.

  We confirmed that by walking out and checking the remains of the remains. No head, no legs, damn near nothing left but a ribcage with a couple chunks of meat still on it. Annie frowned. ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘There’s no fur. Shouldn’t there be fur?’

  ‘Huh. Yeah, there should be. Right?’ I glanced around the minor gore pile, saw no hair whatsoever. But I did see straight white grooves on the bones. ‘Dude, those are knife marks. No wonder this looks so clean. This thing was butchered. Oh! Check it out!’ I tipped the ribcage over with my foot and tapped my toe on a broadhead lodged in the spine.

  ‘People can’t hunt here though, can they?’

  ‘No, they can’t. It’s a refuge.’

  Annie’s eyes widened. ‘Dude. Poachers?’

  ‘Possible, I suppose. Or someone could’ve dumped the carcass here last fall.’

  ‘If this had been here all winter, not only would there be fur everywhere, but the grass underneath would be all matted down and nasty. This is positively springy. There would be ice underneath, too, like under the log over there. And that arrowhead –’

  ‘Broadhead.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  ‘No, it’s called a broadhead.’

  ‘I know. My statement stands.’ She paused, daring me to go on. I passed. ‘Anyway, the arrowhead is steel, right? It’s not rusty. A few months of exposure should’ve made it rust.’

  ‘Maybe. I think they’re stainless, though. They won’t necessarily rust that quickly, especially if they’re not exposed to air.’

  ‘How about this? Do you see any bite marks?’ I didn’t. ‘Animals would’ve scavenged this by now, and not just Rusty. The legs and head were all chopped clean off. Rusty took like ten seconds to get that head. He didn’t have to tear it off.’

  ‘Look, not sayin I don’t believe you but,’ I shrugged, ‘let’s head back, alright? Gettin a little late to play CSI. We’ll be lucky to make it home before dark.’

  And it was plenty dark when we got back. I turned around to make some wiseass remark and tripped over a deer’s head on the front steps. I snorted and kicked it. Was almost inside when Annie said, ‘Hey! No antlers.’

  ‘So it’s a doe. Whoopee.’

  ‘No, I mean it should have antlers. Look at the exposed bone here.’ She poked a couple nubs of bone on the top of the head. ‘This is a buck who dropped his antlers. No more than a month ago. Boom, Watson! Poached!’

  ‘You can’t do anything about this?’ Annie seemed about to spit.

  ‘Not about this particular case, no,’ the mustachioed game warden – sorry, ‘Conservation Officer’ – Kilpatrick said. ‘We’ll keep a closer eye on the Refuge and hopefully catch any other instances of dumping poached animals there.’

  ‘Hopefully?’

  ‘It’s not feasible to patrol the entire Refuge at all times. It’s well over two thousand acres.’

  ‘So you watch the edges! Not like you can drag a carcass in from the road without being seen by freakin someone!’

  ‘Apparently you can, Miss Anderson. As you were so helpful in pointing ou
t.’ Kilpatrick looked at my parents and me. ‘Anything you could add?’

  ‘Rusty found that first leg a week or so ago. What was that, Thursday?’ Dad looked at Mom who nodded.

  Kilpatrick jotted that down. ‘Anything else?’

  We glanced at each other, shook our heads.

  He thanked us again and left, but not without giving Dad a warning to keep Rusty out of the Refuge. ‘Good way to get him shot,’ he said. ‘Zero tolerance for dogs runnin deer.’

  Mom and Annie cleared the table – Kilpatrick had showed up right when supper was finishing – while Dad and I sipped bottles of his foul beer. ‘Pisses me off,’ he said, ‘how people can be so greedy. Killin animals out of season. At least they butchered this one. Most of those assholes just shoot em for a trophy or for shits.’

  ‘You don’t even hunt, why are you so bent outta shape?’

  ‘Ain’t the point. There’s a time and place for things. You kill a deer right now, you probly killed three. Throws off the balance of things. Coyotes start killin goats or cats, there ain’t enough deer to feed em. Besides all that, it’s illegal. Bible says we gotta respect those in authority over us. Unless they’re goin against God.’

  ‘Bible also says don’t swear, Bill Anderson,’ Mom said. ‘Oughta wash your mouth out with soap.’

  ‘Some things, Kara, there just ain’t other words that work. Some things are worth swearing about.’

  ‘Damn skippy,’ I agreed.

  Mom rolled her eyes and smacked me upside the head with a dishtowel. ‘Turd.’

  Annie, munching on a Rice Krispie bar, took a seat next to me. ‘So what we gonna do about this?’

  ‘Do? Nothing. Freaking nothing.’

  ‘Oh come on. I have a four day weekend starting tomorrow. We have to do something.’

  ‘No. I came out here to have a few days away from doing stuff about stuff. And to spend time with my wonderful family, of course, but mostly to stop getting involved.’