The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

On screen magnified a thousand times—Jim. Jerry shook his head slowly and his hollow green chest fluttered with good feelings. There was his younger brother, piloting a very old, silver-metallic heli-jet. The incongruent craft was in fantastic condition; just like the one Herald had owned—and Jerry’s facile mind realized the chain of events, stringing them together like a block-chain bacchanal: it was Herald’s. And Jerry squinted to see—as if he actually needed to—and smiled.

  “My brother,” Jerry said, and he visualized the sequence of events unbelievably leading both him and his bro to this point. All because he asked Herald, while Jerry himself, vowed to protect Amy at all costs. And Jerry smiled in the face of a thousand years of pain and lost loves, and the good times sprinkled about since the apocalypse began, and to his own coming death, as welcome as the idea was, if he couldn’t somehow get Jim out and away from this place. And he also smiled because Jim looked like he’d just smoked a bowl. Rainbows were coming off him and mixing with the yellow aura of the heli-jet moving far faster than its rotors could propel it.

  He wiped the nostalgic smile and got serious. Leave the cloak in place and try to get Jim’s attention visually; the feed was constantly generating newly deciphered signals which dissembled Kraw’s guise.

  Jerry wished he had a way to communicate through a quantum channel, but no dice, not here, and not to the heli-jet or Jim’s mind, which was probably firewalling much in order to get even this close. And Jerry knew if he broke radio silence all hell would break loose. Jim would still make it in. Jerry engaged the aft thrusters to catch up with his brother. He’d reach him in a few minutes, and Jim would reach the center of the machine world a few minutes after that.

  Now, how to go about this? Jerry thought. Activate orange-jumpsuit hologram mode? That wouldn’t work and there wasn’t time to create a new hologram. Knowing Jim, he’d probably send the finger and floor it. Fire on him? Over him? That too would alert the swarms of a presence. Jerry decided within a nanosecond of a nanosecond that he’d first try to get Jim’s attention visually, and a comprehensive plan was born. He needed to wake Andy.

  “Andy, man, you gotta get up.” Jerry made the lights on the bridge flash like a strobe. “Shit, he’s really out.” Another split-nanosecond thought worked its way to Jerry’s figurative forehead like an electron popping in and out of existence, and Jerry did what he had to do. He vented the animal cargo hold full of dead specimens Boron had collected yet had been unable to release in time because of the power-saving mode he’d been forced to enact after a failed attempt at inprocessing—Jake, Kelly, Julian... There were hundreds of dead species in the hold: snakes, rats, mostly bugs, some rabbits, even a few deer—death by dehydration, for they probably ate one another after the power went dead, in turn freeing them from their individual holds. Jerry stood up, deactivated the hologram currently making the bridge area look like a carbon-fiber, futuristic game room, and began punching the appropriate bluish-white tube on the ceiling. Within a few seconds the metal gave way. Jerry, through the suit, smelt it in the same way his thousands of eyes could see. He keeled over, then shut off that sense—and Andy took in a mouthful through his open and drooling mouth.

  “Ack, uhaaaah, what the fuck!” Andy’s eyes went wide and his thin face looked like the screaming mask Jim had worn when he was a young kid—Halloween, Jerry was 18.

  Jerry couldn’t help it, his mind played out memories and correlated things in ways he was still learning to manage. And he busted out laughing right there. His dent for a mouth was black, deep, and fluttered in and out like a toad’s belly. And the sound came from his every pore as if he was wearing skin made of cell-phone speakers.

  “Jerry, I can’t—”

  It was bad. Andy started convulsing. That shut down Jerry’s laugh and he activated. He ripped off Andy’s shirt like a professional waiter yanking a tablecloth, then wrapped his bud’s face. Next, he plucked the armrest from his captain’s seat, put the cushion end on the pipe, and bent the steel armrest around the damaged section of pipe. Within moments Andy came to.

  “Sorry, man,” Jerry said. “I had to wake you.”

  “Shit.” Andy hacked a few more times through his shirt. He looked as if he’d just gone through a car wash, fun house, and haunted house.

  “No shit, and not much time,” Jerry said. He pointed straight ahead. It was Jim’s heli-jet, making a sloping dive straight for the now wide-open dome, straight into the eye of the storm encircling it. Like tunnel vision the edges became thicker and darker with each second, and the ringed world inside the maw grew brighter. Drone beelines occasionally zipped by and Jerry and Jim fluttered their falling ships like waves through the impossible grid. “We’re going to come up beside him—I’ll need you to do a little acting. He should recognize this ship, a memory will pop, and then hopefully he’ll follow us.”

  “That’s right,” Andy said, muffle-mouthed. They were a half a minute from the tiny craft. “What Kim and the others told us! He’d surely seen this ship as it made off with those who’d been stolen from Jewel City.”

  “And if I know my brother, it’ll piss him the fuck off. He’ll give chase. We might just witness his new power in action. If that doesn’t work we’ll have to break radio silence, or fire on him.”

  “And that’ll piss off—them.”

  “Billions of the motherfuckers.” They both gazed out the window. Breaking radio silence was not an option, but they would as a last resort. Outside, which looked like inside, inside the bowels of their worst possible nightmare, there were ships everywhere, larger than Kraw, encircling it like planets, vomiting drones and expelling gas, and some were raining sludge, or shit. The world beyond their viewport, now, was shadowed by layer after layer, Antarctica-thick blankets of drones swaying like the rains of a distant mega storm. They were deep now, final-layers deep and sinking into a living, choking realm. Andy’s eyes said, “Fuck that,” and, “I fuckin’ hope this shit works.”

  Jerry, arriving from the back, the ship being piloted through one of his near countless mental faculties, handed Andy the broken glasses. One of the lenses was gone, one cracked. Andy removed the wrap around his mouth and put them on.

  “Fuck that, Jerry,” Andy exploded, getting the message from the one working lens. “Are you insane?”

  “I know my brother. That’ll piss him off. He will give chase.”

  “Sick, man, just fuckin’ sick.”

  “It’s the only way, now hurry, take off your pants.”

  114. The Act

  They pulled up beside Jim just seconds before entering the glowing maw. The hurricane of drones and orbiting ships were above them now. Jim slowed; Kraw slowed.

  Ahead were rings of light in every color, colors seemingly possible, and the intricacy was like the insides of a Jupiter-sized anthill in which the ants were intelligent, yet not, and had birthed more ants than sustainable for the massive community. Something, was ready to happen.

  Circuits swirling about, light dancing in patterns that seemed to float in and out of existence itself, and beautiful iridescent gas began to create images from their thoughts. It was an orchestra—clocks moving backward, historical figures’ heads floating about, and what seemed, apparitions—and the overwhelming intake sent three sets of eyes into a state of mesmerization; as if Father Maximilian Hell had fought the ether of time and was magnetizing their noodles with a magnetar in each hand. Two identical apparitions—one behind Jerry, one behind Andy—pressed glowing orbs into their temples. And as if they were being injected with God particles by the phantasms of famous scientists of the past, others floated around and through them. And the magnetic twist of Hell’s hands choked their heads. Like a new version of the Higgs, popular theoretical physicists of days long since wiped activated a field which brought to life a new universe within their minds. The city-sized tunnel of rings, lights, and gas seemed a bottomless pit, and even the massive Kraw was nothing but a cell entering an artery; an atom appearing in a new and wondrous universe with
a plethora of contrasting, and perhaps conflicting, laws. Yet there was something inside, at the depths which felt finite just the same, something bright and white, something no bigger than a sewing-needle’s prick.

  Andy felt it, as if there was an actual needle—entering each of his eyes!

  Jerry felt it too—as if a million needles were stabbing every eye on his green skin suit. But it wasn’t a bad sensation. The needles seemed to inject them with a calling, an insatiable urge. And, information came with it. The point ahead was an end, a way out, a way to actually die for once and for all on every plane, every possible level of existence, and every time and level and combination of—entropy itself. It was the opposite of existence and it was ready to blow. And, it knew, had always known, that Jim was coming.

  Jerry pulled himself out of it, then slapped naked-Andy as hard as he could. Andy kept staring at it so Jerry slapped him again. Nothing. He thought about unfurling the armrest from the ventilation tube above, but then Andy did snap out of it.

  “It knows about Jim!” Jerry yelled.

  “But it doesn’t know about us!”

  “We’re the anomaly—there’s always one, at least one! Now, let’s do this, we have to stick with the plan.”

  Jim was oblivious, smiling like a stoner. The rainbows were coming off him as if he was a prism being targeted by the white needle of light below. He was perfectly aligned to merge with it and everything was proceeding as planned. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the craft floating beside him. It was massive and entering the enlightening void right alongside him and his overclocked, hardworking heli-jet. He saw its bridge. Inside was a tall, dark-green creature, at the helm and giving it to a poor naked human man who was bent over the panels. The smooth green one was laughing and working it good, and the other, a flannel shirt beside him, blue jeans draped over the chair behind him, was fighting it, crying, and trying to resist. Then, as the green one turned his head to see Jim, with his dark and hollow evil eyes over a smiling, sinister mouth, Jim returned to the alien freak his angering eyes—and the green one raised the middle finger while plowing away at the human. A tongue morphed itself out from the freak’s green face and whipped around, then he bent forward in a display of audacity and licked the back of the wriggling human’s head and ears.

  Sure, Jim knew the ship. And just as he fell into the weird perspective of what he was witnessing he was also plucked from the mesmerizing grasp of what lie ahead; he saw things objectively and received a dose of residual information from the new neighbor. He realized just then, it’d had been expecting him—in order to complete the wipe! He was the missing piece of the puzzle, with a piece of the anomaly that was a chance—in his head!

  He wasn’t heading to destroy the damn thing by injecting it with himself, a virus he knew he could become, he was about to destroy everything, probably a good chunk of a nearby universe in the process, possibly the entire galaxy in this one. Jim pulled back on the yoke and whipped the heli-jet around. He then tried to make the same portal he’d manufactured in order to save time, to escape the trickery that’d fooled him and so many, and to escape this trap in which he was knee deep!

  “That did it!” Jerry said. “Yes! Put your clothes on, dude.”

  “Yeah—but where is he going?” Andy asked, rubbing his ass. “Isn’t he supposed to be chasing us?”

  Jim had turned around and was heading up and out. Jerry and Andy, still facing downward, attempted the same; it was more difficult turning the massive behemoth, but Kraw was powerful and they managed in a sweeping feat. Andy’s stomach turned inside out as Jerry took it for a dynamic, twisting loop that made for the most effective U-turn; the recovery shake Andy’d been given at Extarion sprayed the bluish-white pipes above as though neon-green glow sticks and ketchup packets had been fired from a potato cannon. He wiped his mouth as his eyes rolled back into position.

  Glancing one last time into the hole, Andy and Jerry saw it. Awe was a boot to the chest. The singularity of light became red and, billions, trillions of drones were coming out from beyond the edges of the walls. Like black gas bordering a liquid state—but the ship’s zoom on-screen confirmed it: every molecule of gas was a drone! Most as large as an automobile, some larger, and trillions were smaller. As if every person in every city of the world, when it had been whole, were the infinite molecules of a constipation-liberating turd the size of Deimos, being ejected from a clogged toilet the size of Phobos. And the walls of the world-sized tunnel glowed only with red as the black sludge of drone matter oozed out.

  “We better get the fuck out of here, and fast,” Andy said, eerily, still rubbing his butt, and trying to get a handle on his stomach—its contents leaking on him from the tubes above. Jerry remorphed into his redneck shape and nodded. Their faces went long as if they’d just witnessed the birth of a black hole, one that was melting, and giving chase like a Brobdingnagian claw.

  The Gs were half as bad, but Andy once again became a basset hound as Jerry gave Kraw the hammer. They shot straight up and followed Jim, who oddly, wasn’t going fast at all. The rainbows had stopped, his yellow aura was gone, and the heli-jet was a flea traveling at flea speed.

  115. A Spanking for Q

  “Target that maw, Snibble Nuts!” He said it with the alacrity of Napoleon.

  “You got it, Q,” the round-headed yellow one said at the center position of the five-being crew: a human had his right, a blue one had his left, the far ends curving around Q’s sides were two old, yet beautiful females in tight white uniforms: Q’s wives. Q commanded the central seat, legs unable to reach the floor. He was old too, and except for the blue one who didn't age, so were they all. Q still had black hair, although it was more coarse, and still sported his signature bowl cut.

  “Coordinate all attacks on that doodad at its center.”

  “The red light, Mister Q?” one of his wives asked, sensually.

  “Yes, Mrs. Q,” he replied sarcastically and slow.

  “It’s closing!” said the human dressed in maroon and white.

  “I see that, fartball,” Q blasted, “now do it, Blabberin’ Barry, before it does close! Everything we got, now!” Then Q squinted. “Wait, cancel that. Zoom in, right there.” He got up from his chair like a young and spunky one-hundred-year-old, walked toward the grand screen and climbed onto the panel. He stood on it and poked his finger at a tiny blip. It was the point behind which, there was a drone army emerging. From space it looked like a growing, sinuating black leech the size of Rhode Island, one sliding up and out of a glowing bloody warble.

  “Holding on the attack,” Samyreux said, his blue head gracefully turning to face Q. “Zooming in.”

  “What is it?” Q asked.

  “Looks like some sort of dark-green ship, my love,” said his wife, on the right. Her hair was long and white and put into a set of two braids, each coming from the sides of her head like pigtails. Q just stood on the panel, hands on hips. He squinted to see something else. “More zoomity-zoom, dudes!” They all saw it now. There was what appeared to be, a little helicopter flying before a massive green ship.”

  “We’re about to lose all visibility,” Barry said.

  “An unbelievable swarm, larger than a hurricane,” said the blue one beside him, with his mind. “By my calculations both ships will be destroyed in less than one minute.”

  With zoom at maximum they all spotted a single human inside the bridge of the large ship. He was heading toward the back, a door opened, he ran through it, and it closed. Then the helicopter disappeared behind the large ship; after a moment its thrusters went bright, illuminating the now closely trailing swarm being vomited from the city-sized hole. Like a lotus flower growing in reverse the maw was closing quickly.

  “It picked him up, I think,” Q’s other wife said. She was tall and thin with high cheekbones and short, bobbed, silvery hair; if she was a hundred, then she was also 29, and, a supermodel.

  With his mind the pastel-blue being delivered a comprehensive ou
tline of updates to his last prediction. The green ship had employed a magnificent set of lasers and was unleashing a David’s-worth of moxie to the imposing Goliath.

  “Forget about the hole—” They all watched as the aperture closed. “—assist that ship! Target those swarms closing in on it, dudes.”

  Every one of the fleet’s two-dozen ships teetering the border of dirty air and dirty space began its assault. Constantly, they’d been zapping drones in space, some in orbits that diverted themselves toward the fleet at ultra-high velocity. Since they’d approached Earth, the fleet, ships of all types from all worlds, entered what seemed a soup of chaos and it was nearly as bad, now, as the chaos unfolding below, on Earth.

  “We can’t keep them off us much longer,” Yelowan said, “much less assist that ship.”

  “Now I see why Herald said it was impossible,” added Samyreux, mentally. “The entire planet is a beehive—”

  “And now it’s angry,” interrupted Barry.

  “There must be a way,” Q thought. He went back to his chair and plopped into it. His wives turned from their screens to offer some support in the form of smiles. But their smiles were dissembled from very apparent nervousness. It didn’t take a genius to see they’d checked in to a roach motel. A trap. The space drones were doubling, tripling, quadrupling in numbers and the lasers were having a hard time keeping up. A near miss exploded near Bucko’s saucer, almost destroying it. Dynamically, and what seemed beyond the bounds of reality in this three-dimensional plane, space was becoming clogged with ever-increasing numbers of ever-varying ships, drones, and suicide satellites. Large ships the size of a small moon vomited countless burps of millions.

  And the planet below became dark and angry. Something had activated. Like a living blanket, the drones, ships, and oddities like skyscraper-sized snakes took to the land, crawling, and to the sky, slivering. Twenty-three faces, the captains of the twenty-three other ships making up Q’s bright, yet at least compassionate, idea—the Super Duper Rescue Squad he’d named it—adorned screens rounding the brim of his bridge. None had an idea. Faces were a film reel of somber clips, and hope was sand falling into an hourglass with the bottom busted out. Q waved his hand, making the display swoop to the side. The desert where Jewel City resided was being encroached upon at an astounding rate.