And Now, Time Travel

by Christopher Brimmage

  Alex furrowed his brow. “Suckle at the teat of your wisdom? What does that even mean?” Alex made a mental note to add this exchange to the ongoing backlog of Captain King Solomon’s inappropriate workplace behavior that he would someday be submitting to the Humanoid Resources Department.

  Captain King Solomon furrowed his brow right back at Alex. The Captain said, “It means that you should observe my process for making decisions and implement it into your thinking. Try using your brains rather than your spear. Or don’t, and I will instead cut you in half to teach you a lesson.”

  Alex sighed. As he thought back upon his time in service to this captain, he realized that the sagest insight he had ever gained was that if one strategy worked once, use it over and over and over again. Instead of commenting on the overuse of the Captain’s bifurcation threat, Alex instead decided to comply, hoping it would speed this interaction along. “Yes, sir. I will absolutely do that.”

  Captain King Solomon stared at Alex for a long, silent moment. Then he nodded. “Good. Good. Now head down to the cargo hold and escort Agent Arthur back here. Bring his companions, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Before Alex could completely turn away and exit the bridge, Captain King Solomon said, “You should know that this particular errand does not exist merely to teach you humility—though that is a helpful byproduct. I have given you this duty because you and I both originate from the same earth as most of Agent Arthur’s companions. It will ease their transition into life on this ship to interact with one of us rather than with a humanoid from some other random earth’s timestream. And since I must create an entry into the Captain’s Log before we can jump away from this moment in this earth’s timestream, I cannot embark on the errand myself without causing unnecessary delays.”

  Alex nodded as he spun on his heel and walked to the door. It slid open and he entered a long hallway, its walls made of metal painted beige and decorated with portraits of former captains and their first officers. Its floor was corrugated metal covered in thin carpet topped with a gripping material that prevented crew members from slipping and sliding across the floor in instances of the ship rocking when under attack. Alex passed a dozen crossways with hallways that extended into other parts of the ship, including the recreation room and the crew pub. About a quarter-mile farther on, this hallway ended at a bank of cylindrical elevator tubes. The crowd waiting for a car stepped aside to allow their senior officer to cut to the front of the queue. An elevator opened, and five Purple Shirts stepped off. Alex and four Purple Shirts stepped onto the elevator car in their place.

  “Press Sublevel 6 for me,” Alex ordered to no one in particular. A Purple Shirt obeyed.

  The elevator zoomed downward. The plummet caused Alex’s stomach to drop. He did not like the feeling, for it reminded him of the moment he was recruited into the B.T.T. He had lain ill in bed for eleven days at the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. On the morning of the twelfth day, as he stared up at the gilded ceiling, a light flashed above him and he dissolved into nothingness. He reappeared somewhere new, and when he did, his stomach lurched so hard that he vomited. When he recovered himself, he found himself standing before a panel of seventeen men, women, and assorted creatures. They sat on a wooden dais twenty feet above him and wore black robes that trailed all the way to the ground at Alex’s feet. He noticed that his vomit had landed squarely on the pleated end of one of the robes.

  One of the panel members—a pale man with corpse-blue skin—asked Alex if he would like to be healed and to join the Bureau of Time Travel, in whose service he would help protect the Space-Time-Multinuum from dangerous anomalies. Otherwise, Alex’s body would be returned to its current place in his own timestream, where he would die within hours.

  Although Alex did not quite understand what a Space-Time-Multinuum was, nor why these divine creatures had chosen him to protect it, the offer seemed preferable to dying within the next few hours. Thus, he agreed to the deal. And from there, Alex worked his way up the ranks from Purple Shirt to First Officer, surviving every challenge that came his way through a combination of luck, ferocity, and cunning. Compatriots lost or killed along the way were returned dead and broken and mangled to their proper timestreams, and their deaths were recorded in the annals of their earths’ histories as their earths’ timestreams demanded. Their service to the greater good was never known outside the confines of the B.T.T., their reward on average a few extra months of life.

  Alex thought back on his long years of B.T.T. service, his mind’s eye flittering amongst the memories of his many missions and campaigns. His time aboard the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker was his longest in service to a single ship—sixty-three years, not counting a nearly century-long side quest away from the ship that was the result of a Chronal-Dispersion-Shotgun disaster that occurred during a mission—and one in which he had started as a security officer reporting to the then-Chief Security Officer—a halfling named Barnabus “Brandywine” Buckle—and been promoted all the way up to First Officer. Captains came and went. Many died on missions. But this current one, King Solomon—an officer with one hundred seventy-seven years’ experience in B.T.T. service—had taken over duties twenty-two years ago, having been transferred from the captaincy of another ship that was lost in a battle at the end of the Earth 53,307’s timestream. King Solomon had by now lasted longer than any other captain in B.T.S. Unicorn Husker history, and at times, Alex wondered if the gods were keeping King Solomon alive as punishment for some past misdeed of Alex’s, forcing him to endure some odd purgatory consisting of constant lectures about the need for more wisdom.

  The elevator jerked to a sudden halt, and Alex’s thoughts experienced a similar jerk to the present. The other passengers on the elevator were staring at him, and he realized they were waiting for him to exit the elevator car. He stepped off into another long hallway. This one was identical to the one on bridge-level, except its walls were painted maroon and different portraits lined its walls. Alex followed the corridor until he came to the first crossway. He turned right. This hallway looped back in the direction from which he had just come, but it bypassed the bank of elevators and opened on a winding staircase. Alex descended this staircase to the cargo hold.

  Chariots and carriages and cars and jets and rockets and hovering discs and twirling energy tornadoes and thousands upon thousands of other disparate modes of transportation lay stacked on shelves across the vast expanse of the cargo hold, all arranged in precise organized fashion according to timestreams and earths by the Inventory Officer, Yardish Groveland. Yardish was a black-haired female from Earth 8,808,763 with a gigantic unibrow, a wispy mustache, and a penchant for spreadsheets and organization. Her skills were tested and proven competent over and over as she speedily provided the Landing Crews with anything they needed every time a mission required specialized gear or localized transportation or disguises to blend in with the natives on whatever random earth at whatever random point in its timestream was causing whatever random anomaly that needed to be resolved.

  Yardish did not look up from her computer as Alex approached her. Instead, she raised one arm and pointed to her right, toward the far end of the cargo hold. Alex nodded his thanks and marched in the direction she had indicated.

  His passed row after row of shelving that stretched out of view into darkness above. Robot arms dangled from the ceiling and flittered about, moving objects to other shelves or placing them on the ground in preparation for upcoming missions. Alex walked straight down the row for nearly a half-mile before finally reaching his goal.

  Agent Arthur’s hovering dolly floated above a raised metal square embedded in the floor. The square was about ten-feet by ten-feet and was deep cobalt in color. Each row in the cargo Hold had one of these raised metal squares at its end. It was a Reintegration Transfer Conduit. When cargo was brought aboard the ship, it would appear atop one of these squares according to the location that Yardish felt was most efficient and appropriate, at which point the ro
botic arms dangling from the ceiling would dart down and move the cargo to its proper shelf. Alex sighed, wishing the robotic arms would have tucked the dolly holding Agent Arthur onto some shelf at the back of the cargo hold where he would never be found.

  Agent Arthur lay on his side, asleep and snoring. Drool covered his cheek. Alex scowled at him. Next to the prone agent was the agent’s younger-self, cradled in the arms of a woman who looked identical to the ship’s new Communications Officer, 29333—an interesting woman who had been freshly promoted and reassigned to the Unicorn Husker due to heroic deeds aboard the B.T.S. Bumblebee Witch during its intervention in the Sentient Rock Rebellion of Earth 6,823,009,008,043.

  And frozen in place toward the back of the dolly towered a gigantic robot. The twelve-foot tall behemoth had an oblong head with three radar dishes sticking out from its top, two telescopic red eyes, and a speaker embedded in its head beneath steel mesh in the equivalent location to where a human’s mouth would sit. It had no neck that Alex could see. Instead, its cylindrical torso extended for five feet below its head, and large dials and knobs covered the front of its torso. Three huge wheels jutted out from below the robot’s torso, and foot-long daggers extended from the spokes of each of these wheels. Large pipes formed the machine’s arms, and these pipes each ended in an enormous drill. The robot’s arms were so long and wide and thick that they reminded Alex of the king of Earth 7,099,443,201, whom Alex had met on a mission there to save its people from an impending Chronal-Hurricane originating two realities over. The people of that earth were a race of gigantic gorilla-doctors who preferred surgically replacing their natural limbs with weaponry in order to wage war upon one another. Their king had replaced his forearms and hands with drills, and this robot brought to Alex’s mind of a chrome version of that king.

  Alex removed a rectangular device from his holster, tapped a few buttons on its top, and then set it down atop the hovering dolly. A bright green flash burst from it, accompanied by green smoke that smelled of seaweed salad pureed in balsamic vinegar. The younger Arthur and his female companion leapt to their feet.

  “What the hell is happening?” demanded Younger-Arthur.

  Before Younger-Arthur had the chance to wait for an answer, the side-effects of becoming unfrozen in time caught up to him. He and his female companion both collapsed, toppling back down into a prone position on the dolly. They rubbed their legs.

  “What is happening to me?” demanded the female.

  The robot did not move. Words emanated slow and slurred from its speakers, “[whir] Drillbot’s gears feel – CLACK – feel rusted.”

  “I see that Agent Arthur failed to explain anything to you. That is no surprise. You are merely experiencing the discomfort of being unfrozen in time. It will pass momentarily. Nothing to worry about,” said Alex.

  The two humans stared at Alex in confusion. He sighed. He had been speaking in his native tongue instead of this duo’s, having forgotten to use the universal translator in his brain to adjust his speech to their language. It was a reminder of something he needed to do for them so that they might fit in more easily on this ship and not rely on others to translate for them. He glanced at the robot and asked, “Can you understand me?”

  “[whir] Drillbot has – CLACK – Drillbot has universal translators embedded in his – CLACK – his programming.”

  Alex nodded. He removed from his holster two discs—not three, since the robot already possessed universal translator technology— the size and shape of fish food. He placed one on each of his index fingers and then squeezed his thumbs down atop them. A tiny jolt of electricity surged through his fingers to let him know the discs were now active. He frowned as he shoved his index fingers—and thus the discs—up the left nostril of both Younger-Arthur and the female. Once Alex removed his fingers from their nostrils, bolts of yellow electricity flashed from their noses. The smell of burning nostril hair filled the area.

  Alex nodded once more, because the electricity meant that the Universal-Translator-Flakes—a species of tick from Earth 7,099,332,126—were burrowing up into the language centers of the duo’s brains and finding homes. These creatures would feed off written, oral, and body language perceived by their hosts and instantly defecate translations directly into their hosts’ brains. The creatures were standard-issue equipment for every B.T.T. agent to allow communication with anyone in the Space-Time-Multinuum, and though these two were not agents, they were important enough to the B.T.T.’s cause to warrant issuing the Universal-Translator-Flakes to them.

  Thus, now that the humans could understand Alex no matter which language he used, he repeated, “I see that Agent Arthur failed to explain anything to you. That is no surprise. You are merely experiencing the discomfort of being unfrozen in time. It will pass momentarily. Nothing to worry about.”

  Agent Arthur interrupted the moment with a loud snore. Alex reached out a finger and considered prodding Agent Arthur with it to wake him. He changed his mind and instead slapped the dolt across the face.

  Agent Arthur jerked upright. “What the hell?” he squealed, holding a hand to the redness forming on his cheek.

  “You were asleep on duty,” said Alex.

  “Well, yeah, because I was awake most of the night because I was excited to complete my mission. And then I was stuck here for, like, forever with these popsicles while I waited for someone from the crew to come meet me and sign me out of the cargo hold.”

  Alex frowned. “Well, I am here to do so. You and your companions are to come with me to the bridge. We will find a uniform for you to change into along the way.”

  Agent Arthur rolled onto his rear end and then gently lowered himself from the hovering dolly. Younger-Arthur shrugged and did the same. They looked like identical frumpy toads, and loathing filled Alex’s heart. Alex stepped toward them and jabbed a fist into each of their bellies. Satisfaction filled Alex as an identical piggish squeal escaped each of their lips. The two Arthurs collapsed to the ground and groaned. As they tried to catch their breaths and writhed with identical pained wiggles, Alex grinned.

  “Hey! That was uncalled for!” screamed the female. She hopped to the ground from the hovering dolly and steadied herself on its side. The robot’s engines roared, and it leapt to the ground beside her.

  Alex turned his back to them and began walking back the way he had come. He waved for the four to follow him.

  “Lady,” Alex called over his shoulder, thinking of how dry his shoes had been for the last twenty years, and how wet they were destined to become over the next few months, “you have no idea the annoyance and suffering and pain those two will cause everyone around them. I’ll guarantee that you’ll want to do much worse to them before long. Now follow me.”

  They did.

  Chapter 4

  AN UNHOLY PACT

  Agent 27142 coughed for a solid thirty seconds. Thick dust floated inside his little cocoon of steel and canvas, making his eyes water. But that mattered little to him. He felt like the most fortunate B.I.T. agent in the Multiverse, for he had survived certain death through sheer luck.

  He was sitting in the same position in which he had been sitting when attempting to pry the god’s disembodied hand from his feet. The mammoth steel torsion bar lay across the exact spot his head had occupied before he had sat upright. Broken pieces of canvas and steel lay twisted and crumpled around him, but he had not been crushed to death. Granted, a jagged metal pole stuck out of his left thigh where it had impaled him, and he was quite certain that his right elbow had shattered, but at least he was alive.

  He laughed in delight. But when he inhaled to laugh again, the dust filled his lungs and he broke into a new fit of barking coughs. He reached into his holster and drew from it a small, round disc. He tapped an orange button on its bottom and tossed it into the air. It banged against the top of his metal cocoon, but instead of ricocheting and bouncing to the ground, the disc hovered in place. It began to glow, providing pale white light so that Agent 27142 cou
ld gain his bearings.

  However, he found that there were few bearings to gain. He was curled in a tiny space within the jagged metal of the toppled billboard. The space was just long enough for his legs to curl before him so that his knees pushed into his chest and just tall enough for him to sit with his head hunched over his knees. Above him, the letters M-U-S-E were crunched together so they were nearly illegible. Agent 27142 sighed. He winced as he reached up to the disc and tapped a blue button on its side.

  The disc buzzed and then released an arc of light from its top. The arc rotated three hundred and sixty degrees, momentarily blinding Agent 27142 as he stared into it. He rubbed his eyes with his palms and cursed himself for his idiocy. After a few moments, the blinding afterimages departed his vision, and he was able to see the output of his device. A three-dimensional model created from solid light now hung in the air below the disc, portraying a toppled and crumpled billboard lying on a street.

  Agent 27142 winced once more as he reached up and spun the model. It turned in the air. He pinched his fingers and the image zoomed closer. He found his cocoon and then twisted the model to find the path of least resistance to freedom above him. He nodded. There appeared to be nothing that would collapse on him or shift in a deadly manner if he were to force himself out that way. The only impediment to that direction was the solid mass of steel, but a small problem like that would merely slow him down.

  Agent 27142 reached down to his holster and pulled out another of his brass pill-shaped devices—the ones with the retractable spikes that heatlessly melt anything into which they are stabbed by rearranging the recipient’s molecules—having dropped the one he had been using in the fight with the god and losing it permanently when it was buried somewhere out of reach beneath the toppled billboard. He pressed the tiny button on the new device’s side, and when its three petite spikes jutted out, he stabbed the device up into the wreckage above him. A portion of the billboard melted. It flopped down onto his head and then sloughed off to rest in a puddle on the ground. He frowned. Though the liquified metal and canvas was not hot, its weight was uncomfortable when it smacked against him. A gash in the metal about a foot deep and a foot wide now lay in the crumpled metal and canvas above him. He reached up into the gash and stabbed again. More melted steel and canvas poured down around him and collected on the ground.