29333 leaned against the license scanner to the right of the closed door. It chirped as it read her license and then turned green. The black door zoomed up into the ceiling. She stepped inside. Normal-Art followed her. The door slammed shut behind him as soon as he finished crossing the threshold.
Once inside, Normal-Art’s senses reeled. The room was black with a single light hanging down from the ceiling. Shining silver formed a grid pattern across the stark black walls, ceiling, and floor. The black walls felt like they stretched on forever, but the grid pattern brought a confining order to the infinence. Normal-Art felt overwhelmed by claustrophobia and agoraphobia all at once.
29333 said, “Sprinkle Buns,” and then followed it with a string of numbers that Normal-Art could not follow. Then she closed her eyes.
The silver stripes jerked back and forth as they began vibrating and then began undulating like waves. Normal-Art grew dizzy. The room itself felt as though it were thrashing against the constraints of the silver grid. Pixels began rocketing from the wall and filling the room. The first layer formed a world that seemed made from 8-bit graphics. Normal-Art felt as though he had been engulfed in an old video game. But then the pixels kept coming. The dizziness and nausea overwhelmed him, and he collapsed onto the floor and became sick.
Afterward, he rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. A bare foot began nudging him in the side. He opened his eyes just wide enough to make eye contact with 29333.
“Sorry. Forgot to warn you to close your eyes,” 29333 said.
“Somehow I doubt that was an accident,” he said, and then shut his eyes once more.
“Believe what you want,” she replied with a shrug.
Something tickled the back of Normal-Art’s neck, and the distinct smell of green grass filled his nostrils. He realized he was lying on an overgrown lawn. He looked to his left and noticed the front of a familiar apartment building looming before him. He gasped in surprise.
Normal-Art sat up slowly and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He glanced around. Across the street, the billboard for Muse Electronics rose high in the air. A blue Volkswagen Beetle was driving up the street. Something seemed odd about it, and after a few seconds of staring, Art realized it seemed odd because it was not moving.
“Hmm,” he muttered. Then he spun around so he could face his apartment. As he soaked in its rundown façade, his heart filled with more joy than he had felt in a long, long time. But when his eyes locked upon the scene in front of his door, the joy curdled and made him want to vomit again out of sheer despair.
On the threshold of Normal-Art’s doorway stood B.I.T. Officer 27142 and a second 29333, this one in a B.I.T. uniform. Like the car on the street, neither of them moved. Normal-Art grew confused, because he also saw himself standing in the threshold of his doorway. Agent 27142 was stabbing a tiny brass pill-shaped device into this other Normal-Art’s hand and melting this other Normal-Art’s pinky.
Normal-Art squealed, “What the hell?”
29333 sighed. “Calm down,” she said. “I didn’t bring you here to frighten you. I brought you here because it’s the only time that I ever experienced this place, and thus it was the only time I could give to Sprinkle Buns to absolutely ensure we could experience that damned couch you’re always droning on about.”
Normal-Art grimaced in confusion. “Huh?”
29333 sighed more heavily. “This is the Holo-Scouting Deck. The room accesses a three-dimensional point at whatever confluence of space and time that you order it to access. I was feeling particularly nice today, so I ordered the room to retrieve a point in time when you would be able to enjoy the cursed couch that you never stop talking about. However, you’ll need to walk past our past selves to do so.”
“So, I’m home? After all these years?”
“Well, yes and no. This device yanks a moment in time from its proper setting and temporarily places it in this room. This allows the crew to scout this moment prior to embarking on a mission and then return this moment to its proper place when finished. Nothing within the image that you see will even know it was briefly displaced from time. Thus, nothing will move or change while we are here—but you will be able to revisit your place of residence as it existed at this particular point in time.”
Normal-Art leapt up onto his feet and grinned. “My couch? My T.V.? They’re all here?”
29333 waved toward the door. “Go in and see for yourself,” she said.
Normal-Art all but sprinted toward the spot where his door used to be. He contorted his body to squeeze past the trio standing in the doorway and giggled with joy. The place was just as he had left it. Toward the back wall stood a mountain of pizza boxes. A few pairs of wild, golden eyes stared out from the dark cracks within, a remnant from the Blue One’s visit to this apartment. The kitchen was messy and dirty. A glass of congealed, spilled milk lay on the ground near the coffee table. And in the center of the room sat the glorious, fluffy couch about which Normal-Art had dreamed for over two decades.
Normal-Art sprinted over to it and dove atop it. It felt a little more like putty than he remembered, but he basked in its contours, nevertheless. He rolled to face the television. A still image encompassed the screen, a picture of a familiar talk show where the host reveals to the guests who is the real father of the guests’ children. In this image, the male guest was standing over the female, yelling at her. Little white letters spelled out, “Lawrence is NOT the father,” next to the talk show logo.
Normal-Art smiled. He dug into the cushions and pulled out the remote. He aimed it at the television and pressed a button to change the channel. The remote squished in his hand. He relaxed his hand and the remote sprang back to normal. Nothing happened to the television. He pressed the button again. Again, the remote squished in his hand and nothing happened. He dropped the remote onto the floor. It dissolved and then reappeared with a flash of light where he had found it, poking up between two of the couch cushions. He stood and trudged over to the television.
Normal-Art banged on the top of the television with his palm. He frowned and looked over at 29333, who had followed him inside. “T.V.’s not working,” he muttered.
29333 sighed. “I told you,” she said. “You are at a single point in time. You will only see whatever image was on the screen at the exact point in the timestream that the computer retrieves.”
Normal-Art nodded and frowned. He returned to the couch and sprawled upon it. Then he sat upright and pointed toward the frozen people in his doorway. “If this room is actually pulling a single point in time into itself, then couldn’t I prevent the last two decades of problems by, I dunno, stabbing past-you and thus making it so that when this moment in time returns to its proper place, there’s no one left alive to kidnap me?”
29333 smirked. She said, “Yes, you could do that. It might even seem cathartic to release some of the frustration you’ve got pent up inside you. But it won’t make a difference. When we’re ready to release this moment back into the wild, this room pulls apart the static image into its molecular building blocks and then reforms them in their proper place. Whatever you do to me and my former colleague would be erased once these pieces are returned.”
Normal-Art kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. “Well, if I can’t take the easy way out, then I guess I’ll just relax.”
29333 sat down on the couch next to Normal-Art. She stared at him for a few seconds. Then she said, “You look so much like him, but you’re so different.”
“Like who?” he asked.
“Who else would I be talking about, you fool? 27142. My colleague from the B.I.T.”
Normal-Art shrugged. He said, “You act like that revelation is some sort of epiphany. You’re the spitting image of Ginny, but you’re totally different. You don’t see me walking around stating the completely obvious.”
29333 frowned. She said, “He was very rigid. Very angry. Very arrogant. But he was such a stalwart force in my life for so long that when I was firs
t recruited by the B.T.T., I thought I would feel lost without him. And at first, I did. I felt like I was missing a limb. You get used to something for so long that when it’s gone, you feel like a part of you is gone, too. But then time stretched on, and I realized that he was an awful prick to everyone around him—including myself—and that the part of me that felt like it was missing was no limb, but a malignant cancer that would have destroyed me if it had not been removed.”
Normal-Art smirked. He said, “And this is where you tell me that even though he was terrible and was a horrible influence on you, you loved him anyway. Right?”
29333 scowled. “Are you daft?” she spat. “Of course not. I never loved him. How could anyone love that black hole of arrogance and bitterness? Hell, I never even liked him.”
Normal-Art shrugged. “Well, it was pretty obvious from observing it for ten years that he was in love with you.”
29333’s scowl deepened. “Don’t even remind me. Did you know that one time when he was drunk, he came to my cabin and actually ordered me to love him back? It was pathetic.”
“If you’re in the mood to belittle that bastard, you’ll hear no argument from me,” said Normal-Art.
“You know I was only upholding the law, right? I had nothing against you.”
Normal-Art shrugged again. He said, “You mentioned that. Having an attack of conscience, eh?”
Normal-Art pointed toward the television. He said, “That kind of thing ever starts happening to me, I just turn on the ol’ T.V., and it takes those feelings and stuffs them deep, deep inside where they can’t bother anybody.”
29333 smiled. She said, “Well, T.V. has not really been an option aboard any of the ships to which I’ve been stationed. I usually rely on the physical act of coitus to keep myself distracted.”
Normal-Art jerked up onto his feet and spun to face her. He promptly tripped over the coffee table and fell onto the span of carpet between the coffee table and the television. He gulped. “Huh?”
29333 guffawed and slapped Normal-Art’s leg. “Oh, don’t get excited. I wasn’t hinting that I wanted anything to do with you. You’re not my type.”
Normal-Art frowned. He realized that he was lying in the exact spot where God-Art had melted so long ago when he had attempted to gain infinite power by consuming the Blue One’s heart. Well, realistically, most of the living room was the spot in which God-Art had melted, but Normal-Art was lying near the epicenter. A couple feet away, circular burns in the carpet marked the spot where Normal-Art had been locked in a fiery cage. He shuddered at the memory. When he did so, his back rubbed across the carpet, and he felt a tiny jolt of static electricity. He frowned harder than ever.
Normal-Art glanced up at 29333. She smirked and then nodded, as though she somehow was cognizant of the shock he had just received. Normal-Art shrugged and said, “Hey, if you don’t mind, can we go to a point in time before the god-version of me showed up on my doorstep? This place is shoving too many bad memories into my face.”
29333 nodded. “Sure, just say the name of the computer, Sprinkle Buns, and then the time, date, earth number, latitude, and longitude of the point in time to which you’d like to go.”
Normal-Art frowned. “Ummm, I guess I could give a date and time, but there’s no way I know the rest of that stuff.”
“Wait, you don’t even know your own earth number? That’s just sad-”
29333 was interrupted by a robotic female voice that seemed to emanate from all around the room. “Officer 29333 and guest Arthur, First Officer Alexandros ho Megas has ordered you to meet at Officer Groveland’s Inventory Requisition Station in the cargo hold immediately to collect your equipment for the mission to Earth 8,669.”
29333 nodded. “Thank you, Sprinkle Buns,” she said. “We will be leaving now. Please shut down the Holo-Scouting Deck after we exit.”
The sweetly melodic, robotic voice chimed back, “It is protocol for you to allow me shut down the program before you leave.”
29333 scowled. “We have been called to a mission, and our orders were to move immediately. We do not have the luxury of waiting.”
A noise that sounded almost like a tsk drifted down from the ether. The robotic voice said, “In that case, I’m noting it here in the computer log, so people don’t blame me if something goes wrong.”
29333 sighed. “We’re on a ship whose sole purpose is to solve problems in the various timestreams throughout the Multiverse. Something will likely go wrong no matter what choice we make. That’s why we average about one big adventure per week.”
29333 did not wait for a reply from the computer, but instead led Normal-Art back out the front door of the apartment and over near the spot they had occupied when the Holo-Scouting Deck experience had begun. The air near them went fuzzy, and then a rectangular area about ten-feet tall disappeared and became a black door. It opened, revealing the antechamber where the three hallways converged outside the Holo-Scouting Deck door.
29333 and Normal-Art stepped through and returned to the regular confines of the ship. As soon as they did so, the door to the Holo-Scouting Deck shut behind them.
Normal-Art followed 29333 to the elevator bank. They cut to the front of the line and entered an arriving car. She pressed the button for Sublevel 6, and the elevator jerked into motion. A few moments later, it stopped, and the doors opened onto a corridor lined with maroon walls.
Normal-Art heard Sprinkle Buns’ voice come from somewhere on 29333’s uniform and say, “Alert. Officer 29333 and guest Arthur, the Holo-Scouting Deck was not able to return all molecules to the past. Some escaped on your persons.”
Normal-Art glanced over to 29333. “Is that normal?” he asked.
29333 shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it happening. But judging by the number of sheer problems this ship deals with, I don’t even know what normal would begin to look like.”
Normal-Art felt a prick deep in his ear canal. The sharp pain made him wince. Before he could stop it, his mouth opened on its own and began speaking. “Then I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about,” he said.
Normal-Art slapped his hand over his mouth. “What the hell?” he muttered.
29333 stared at him with an arched eyebrow. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Another sharp prick deep inside Normal-Art’s skull made him wince once more. Again, his mouth opened, and words hurled unbidden from it, “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Let’s move.”
29333 nodded and turned away. Normal-Art slapped himself in the face, hoping it would solve the weird issues in his brain. He stood silent for a moment. He did not feel another pain in his skull and his mouth seemed to be under his control again, so he shrugged and followed 29333.
*
By the time 29333 and Normal-Art arrived at Inventory Officer Yardish Groveland’s desk, a gaggle of Purple Shirts was gathered around it in different phases of undress. Officer Groveland had handed each of them a purple toga, a wooden staff, sandals, and a purple wig. Nearby, Alex, Bagoo, Ginny, Drillbot, and Older-Art stood already dressed in costume. Drillbot, Ginny, and Older-Art wore costumes identical to those of the Purple Shirts—the only difference being that Drillbot looked even more ridiculous than the others in his—while Alex and Bagoo both wore marigold togas and wigs to match the colors of their officer’s uniforms. The toga fell over Bagoo in such a way that Normal-Art could not even tell that the bog ghost had no legs.
When Officer Groveland noticed 29333 and Normal-Art approaching, she tossed costumes to them. The cold sterility of the organization within the cargo hold clashed with the unkempt nature of Officer Groveland’s unibrow and wispy mustache, and Normal-Art found the juxtaposition oddly beautiful. 29333 immediately stripped and dressed in a marigold outfit identical to Bagoo’s, while Normal-Art shrugged, stripped, and began donning the purple outfit he had been given.
The prick deep in Art’s skull stabbed once more. “What’re these for?” he asked, his mouth yet again moving without his control.
Alex scoffed. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
Normal-Art tried to frown, but he found that he could not. He knew for what these costumes were intended. He had actually listened when Alex had repeated the briefing the last time. They were disguises for entrance into the Montenegro Bay Convention. But his mouth moved of its own accord, saying, “I don’t understand why we’re putting on these ridiculous outfits. What are we going to do in them?”
Everyone in the room groaned, including Officer Groveland—who had not even been present for Normal-Art’s annoyances during the briefing. Some grunts even rose from cages toward the back of the cargo hold where certain exotic animals were housed for exotic missions.
Alex glared at Normal-Art and muttered through clenched teeth, “You told me that you would listen.”
Normal-Art tried once more to frown, and when his lips obeyed, he realized that he could control himself again. He stammered as fast as he could, “I did listen. Don’t listen to me now. There’s something wro-”
The prick jabbed throughout Normal-Art’s skull, and then he slapped himself across the face. A grin appeared on his lips and hung there. His mouth once more moved without his consent and said, “Yeah, I was faking. I said I would listen, but I never said for how long. I stopped a couple seconds in. Please explain what’s happening.”
Alex grabbed Normal-Art by the throat and pulled him close so that their faces were mere inches apart. “Fine. You will listen now, or I will murder you.”
Normal-Art felt his head move in a slight nod.
Alex said, “I will give you the dumbed-down version, because I am tired of repeating myself. We are sneaking into the Montenegro Bay Convention. We’ll be disguised as minor deities from Earth 45,590,888. We are going to prevent the Conspiracy of the Gods from putting the Space-Time-Multinuum in danger.”
Normal-Art’s mouth asked, “And how are we going to do that?”
Alex frowned. Then he said, “By causing a distraction and assassinating the ringleader.”
Normal-Art’s mouth grinned. “And you think that will actually work?”
And Now, Time Travel Page 14