So You Had to Build a Time Machine

by So You Had to Build a Time Machine (epub)

  “My dad was a jackass,” Skid said, her words abrupt.

  Cord stopped. “What?”

  “My dad,” she repeated. “Was a jackass. But he was right some of the time. One of his favorite lines was, ‘If something needs done, do it.’”

  “Sounds like something Andy Griffith would say, but—”

  “But that wasn’t all,” she said over Cord. “It was, ‘If something needs done, do it. Most people won’t.’”

  Cord frowned. “So? What does that have to do with me?”

  “Don’t you get it? We’re the only ones who know about this. Nobody else is going to fix the universe.” Skid stared down Cord. “Do you have a car?”

  “Yeah.”

  She walked past him and stopped at his gate. “You’re driving.”

  7

  The stark terror of a 1950s horror flick in a lab coat subsided once the mantis injected midazolam and David started to relax. The insect with Dr. Chet Hahn’s name tag at least seemed to know what it was doing. A thought nagged at David. A warning, or some damn thing that had seemed important just a few minutes ago. But in the haze of the drug, it was gone.

  The creature helped David off the custodial closet floor by grabbing his shoulders in its hooked front arms and lifting him effortlessly. David winced as his bloody, infected leg dangled below him.

  “Krrkrrrkrrrkrrrk?” it asked, laying him gently atop the clean white sheets of the hospital bed. “Cree? Cree?” It thumped a hypodermic needle and injected something into David’s arm.

  “No. I’m not all right,” David said, worry bleeding from him. “I think my leg’s infected.”

  “Cht, cht, cht.”

  Dr. Hahn plucked surgical scissors from an instrument tray using surprisingly agile chitinous forelegs and sliced David’s slacks, gently peeling them from his leg like it was a banana. A putrid stench wafted up to David’s nostrils.

  “Creet, creet?”

  “Yeah, it’s infected all right,” David slurred. “Can you fix it?”

  “Cht, cht, cht.” Dr. Hahn skittered to a sink and washed his claws, returning to the table with a bowl of liquid and a jar of long cotton swabs. “Krrkrrrkrrrkrrrk?”

  The mantis washed the infected knife wound and cleaned inside it with the cotton swabs. The pain was there, but also far away.

  “You know,” David said, his words oozing out long and slow. “You had me worried with the whole praying ma—” A yawn broke his thoughts. He didn’t remember what he was saying. David tried to focus heavy eyes on the doctor, but the damn mantis wouldn’t stand still. The room began to waver like a heat mirage. “So, how’s your golf game? Those tibial spines must play hell with your back swing.” David thought he asked before his brain dropped off a cliff and everything turned black.

  8

  The road south was dead. Cord’s Toyota hummed alone down Interstate 435, a beltway that encircled Kansas City and would eventually intersect with the US 71, which would then take them to the junction of Routes J and C south of Belton. The lab was on one of those rural highways to the west.

  “Hey, guys,” Cord said, pointing toward a sign that read, Kansas City Zoo: Next right. “Instead of committing a federal crime, how about we go to the zoo? We can take pictures of the elephants, feed the penguins and play chess with the orangutans because they can probably fucking talk by now.”

  Dave laughed from the back seat. “That would be pretty cool.”

  Cord pounded the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “No,” he said between gritted teeth. “It would not. I can’t believe that with a scientist, a baker and a—” he paused and looked at Skid in the rearview mirror “—a potentially dangerous felon, that I’m the voice of reason. And I cheat honest, hard-working suckers for a living. In no way should we be doing this.”

  It was the college road trip to White Castle all over again. You drive, Cord. You’re a great D.D., Cord. Hey, you wouldn’t mind if me and Melanie made out in the back seat, would you? Just put on some tunes so you can’t hear it.

  “Melanie was my girlfriend,” he said under his breath.

  Brick leaned over and whispered loudly enough everyone could hear. “Who’s Melanie?”

  “Whoa.” Dave leaned closer to the front seat and tapped Cord’s shoulder. “Stop the car.”

  “What?”

  He fell back into his seat. “Do I not speak loudly enough? None of you seem to hear me the first time.” He coughed into a closed fist and yelled. “Stop the car.”

  The Toyota screeched to a halt.

  “What?” Cord repeated, but Dave had already released his seat belt and stepped onto the highway. Cord turned toward Brick, who’d opened the passenger door and lifted his bulk onto the Interstate, dragging his explorer’s pack with him.

  “Skid?” Cord asked, but her seat was already empty. “Shit.” He flicked the door handle and followed them outside. “This is surprisingly worse than the road trip to White Castle.”

  Dave stood on the concrete shoulder and stared south. A QuikTrip sat at the bottom of a nearby off-ramp, and an apartment and office buildings lined the highway. Dave stretched, his dirty shirt rippling in a soft breeze that blew from the west.

  “What is it?” Skid asked, hands resting on her knife belt.

  The scientist pointed. “Do you see the spot that looks like a storm?”

  She nodded; part of the southern sky had turned dark purple. “Yeah. It’s a thunderstorm.”

  “No,” Dave said. “It’s not.”

  Brick threw his pack over his shoulders and stepped next to the scientist. A mass of clouds on the near horizon curved over themselves like a fist. It looked like a weather front, but if it were a storm, the wind that brushed his beard came from the wrong direction. “What is it?”

  “A Miller Wave,” Dave said. “The biggest one I’ve seen.”

  Cord slammed both hands onto the hood of his car. “Hey, Bill Nye. Does size matter? Do we need to scratch out wills on the McDonald’s napkins in the glove compartment?”

  Brick considered him from across the roof of the Toyota. “You don’t have a will?”

  “What?” Cord asked.

  “He doesn’t seem to be able to hear you either, Brick,” Dave said. “Maybe he has a hearing problem.” Dave looked at Cord. “Do you have a hearing problem?”

  Cord leaned against the car on his elbows and rubbed his temples with both hands. “No. I don’t have a hearing problem and I don’t have a will.”

  “That’s awfully short-sighted of you.” Brick had a thumb hooked in a strap of his explorer’s pack and looked like a guy taking a break from grad school to backpack across Narnia. “Think of your family.”

  “I don’t have a—”

  “Stop it,” Skid said, but she might as well have shouted. It had the same effect. “It’s coming in fast.”

  The green-rimmed, undulating clouds rolled onto the highway, its center a deep twisting chasm.

  “Do we need to get back in the car?” Cord asked. “We could try to outrun it.”

  “No.” Dave stood on the shoulder, his hands at his sides, watching the incoming interdimensional tempest sweep across southern Kansas City. “Trying to outrun it would be futile.”

  “Resistance is futile,” Brick echoed him. The oncoming wave was even larger now, reality folding in on itself as the wave approached.

  Dave swung his head toward Brick and grinned. “Let’s hope it’s not Locutus of Borg. Am I right?”

  “You two can nerd-bond later,” Skid said, walking to the front of the car. “Can we do anything about what’s about to happen to us?”

  The wave had reached a juncture where the highway merged with the US 350, maybe two miles away. “No,” Dave said. His gaze landed on the QuikTrip. “Wait. Yes, we can. I’m going for beer. Anybody coming with?”

  Everyone stood watching the anomaly crash toward them as Dave
trudged down the thick, weedy grass of the embankment toward the convenience store. The green-tinged storm grew a deeper violet. Thunderless lightning crackled in the chaos.

  “Hey, Dave,” Brick called down the slope. “You watching this?”

  Dave shoved a hand into the air and waved as the storm reached them, sweeping across the landscape, obscuring the world in a Saran Wrap haze. Then the Miller Wave hit, this time with force, like being slapped with a laundry sack of Jell-O. The push knocked Skid backward onto Cord and they both went down. Brick stood through the onslaught of one dimension crashing into another. Then the wave was gone, cascading past them to the north.

  “Don’t touch anything you’ll regret touching later,” Skid said, pushing herself off Cord.

  “You guys okay?” Brick asked, then his eyes hit the landscape around them. “Oh, wow.”

  The world had changed. Fields of prairie grass rippled like ocean waves in every direction, punctuated by occasional patches of deciduous trees. The apartment buildings, the business centers, and the QuikTrip had vanished, replaced by great, jagged lumps of rock.

  “Dave?” Brick called.

  No answer.

  “He disappeared again.” Skid walked around a boulder to stand next to Brick.

  “Yeah,” Brick said. “He went all Gandalf. One minute he’s here, the next minute he’s off dealing with the Necromancer.”

  Skid ignored him, scanning the prairie. “It looks like Europeans haven’t shown up to pour concrete over everything yet.”

  “Yeah,” Brick agreed. “I wonder what else happened.”

  “Hey,” Cord said behind her. “Where’s my car?”

  9

  The white ceiling over the land of white floors seemed too far away to be in the same room as David. His eyes rolled as he tried to focus. Green. Something green stood in the room. Oh, yeah. My doctor.

  “Ha,” David may have yelled, although he couldn’t hear himself. At least, he thought his mouth moved.

  Dr. Chet Hahn pulled a stitch through David’s leg with the green things it used for hands. At David’s shout, it raised one limb to its insecty face and hissed before slipping the needle back into David’s leg and tightening another stitch.

  He’s shushing me? The midazolam still had him, although his brain was starting to shake it off. David tried to give a thumbs up but the most he could do was a smile.

  The mantis doctor threaded another stitch and tied it off, clipping off the surgical filament with his mandibles. Whoa, tried to push itself into the small part of David’s brain that still cared, but failed. Those jaws were sharp, but Chet was a doctor, right?

  Dr. Hahn dabbed David’s stitches with a saline solution and peeled the sterilized protection strips from a large adhesive bandage, stretching it across the wound before leaning back on its four powerful rear legs to admire the work.

  “Chhhhttt. Cht. Chit.”

  Yeah, doc. It’s great, David wanted to say, but he just mouthed like a fish.

  “Chhhttt. Krrrkrrrkrrreeee?”

  The mantis loomed over the bed, and David’s world turned dark. Its triangular head moved closer, its enormous eyes moving independently of each other. Stop it, David thought, his pulse starting to race despite the drug in his system. Stop it. Stop moving, please.

  Dr. Hahn shook its head and rubbed it with a forearm before lifting another hypodermic off the stainless-steel instrument table to insert into David’s arm.

  “Chhhttt. Krrrkrrrkrrreeee?” it repeated.

  “Whaaa—” wheezed out of David as the mantis lifted his arm and bit off one of his fingers.

  10

  The prom dress was uncomfortable. Skid pulled at the parts that gripped her in places tighter than she liked and tried to shift them to the places that were too loose. It was impossible. Jimmy Nikola sat in the back seat with her, a comfortable enough distance away, Skid’s pink corsage between them in the kind of clear plastic box convenience stores put breakfast sandwiches in. Randall R. Roe drove. He insisted. It was his baby girl’s first school dance with a date, so hell yes, he insisted. The circus spent the winter months in Prescott, Arizona, where Randall sent his daughter to public school, ‘to be around some normal people,’ but that and the wisdom of Constantinople Phargus weren’t her only education. During the business year, a teacher traveled with them to make sure the circus kids weren’t getting shortchanged by their parent’s choices.

  Randall had picked up Jimmy at his house in an aged Chrysler New Yorker, smiled as he introduced himself to Jimmy’s parents, Jimmy Sr. and Caroline, who already seemed two or three Cuba Libres into the evening, and promised to take good care of their boy. No hanky panky. Nope. Not on Randall R. Roe’s watch.

  A few miles later, the New Yorker ran out of gas and Randall pulled a dented metal gas can and rubber hose from the trunk. He handed it to Skid.

  “Why do I have to do it?” she’d asked.

  “Because I promised Jimmy’s parents I’d make sure nothing happened to him.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Jimmy said.

  Randall rounded on him. “You shut up, son, and lock that door. I don’t like the looks of this neighborhood.”

  “But what about me?” Skid asked, finding it hard to believe—but only superficially—that her father was sending her to siphon gas in a bad neighborhood on prom night. She stood next to the crumbling curb in the pastel ankle-length dress, her face now as pink as the corsage she hadn’t put on.

  Randall smiled. Skid remembered that. He smiled that I can sell anyone anything smile and said, “You can take care of yourself, kiddo.” Then he slid back into the car and locked his door.

  Skid walked nearly six blocks before she found a car in a dark, shaded spot far enough from the street no one driving by would see her siphoning gas. On the way back to the New Yorker and her date, tears streaking the makeup Randall finally let her wear, a young guy in an Anthrax T-shirt, already missing his front teeth, asked if she wanted to go someplace and get funky. He still may not have the use of his right knee, but that wasn’t her worry. Her worry was walking six blocks in meth town in a prom dress carrying five gallons of gasoline. Randal’s worry of hanky-panky would never happen anyway. She doubted she could find enough gum to remove the taste of regular unleaded from her mouth.

  She never again asked her father if she could go to a school dance.

  “You’re not suggesting we walk,” Skid said to Brick, no question in her voice. “I hate walking. It’s just like prom night.”

  The grin across Brick’s face had pulled so tight, it probably hurt. “Of course we’re walking,” his voice loud, not yelling, booming. “We have to walk, just like the Fellowship, just like Thorin and Company, just like young Spock when he ventured into the Vulcan's Forge mountain range to look for his lost shelat.”

  Cord turned to Skid. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Don’t ask.” She shouted at Brick’s broad back, “Hey, Mortimer Nerd. Do you have a plan?”

  “A walking stick.” Brick said like he hadn’t heard her. He’d already started hiking south on the path of the last Miller Wave. “I need to find a good walking stick. Everybody needs a good walking stick. Bilbo liked walking sticks.”

  “But,” Cord said, his voice not reaching far enough for anyone to care, “I have a ghost tour tonight.”

  Skid increased her pace and touched Brick’s hairy arm. “Brick,” she said. “Do you have a plan?”

  He stopped with and expression like he hadn’t known she was with him. “Yes, walk.”

  She held back the frustration—and, if she was admitting it, the fear—from her voice. “Okay, yes. Walk. But how far?”

  He licked a finger and held it up to test the breeze for no apparent reason.

  “It was about twenty miles to the lab when we started,” Brick said, “and we drove at least five of that. According to Dungeons and Dragons 5e rules, a party
traveling at fast speed can go thirty miles per day; slow is eighteen. For us? We should be ready for battle or whatever by tomorrow afternoon.” He took a deep breath and began to sing as he started to walk again, his voice low and mournful. “Roads go ever, ever on. Over rock and under tree, by caves where never—”

  Skid pushed past him. “I swear to God, Brick, you are not going to make this any worse for me.”

  “You keep thinking that, Skid of the Black Gloom,” Brick said, “but before this is over, some lady warrior is going to wish she had 50 feet of hempen rope and a full water skin.”

  She slapped her thigh. “Let’s just get this over with,” she said, marching through prairie grass that came to her waist. “Keep up, Cord, and watch for anything that might want to eat us. That’s all we need.”

  Chapter Eight

  More September 5

  1

  The dim light was disorienting. The Miller wave hit just as Dave opened the glass door of the convenience store, the undulating purple storm enveloping him and the whole damn place. He stepped out of the wave into a long room filled with shiny furniture and said, “shit.” Karl Miller stomped in moments later, grinning like an idiot.

  I’m in the lab conference room. Then he said, “Shit” again.

  “Why’s it so dark in here?” Dave asked, casually dropping into a comfy office chair and slapping the heels of Cord’s yard shoes onto the conference table, the same table where Friday he had told Karl his math might do exactly what it was now doing. “And do you have any beer squirreled away in this joint? I think I’m going to need some.”

  Karl smiled. Dave made that out by a glint in the darkness. “We have some imported beer for the brass. Alcohol seems to make them a little more agreeable when we tell them something they don’t want to hear.”

  Dave joined his hands and formed his index fingers into a steeple, then he opened the doors to see all the people. “You can fetch me one. I’ll wait.”