And Now, Time Travel

by Christopher Brimmage

  God-Art stared at the creature for a moment, and then he began laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Agent 27142.

  God-Art shrugged. “I kind of expected something like this to happen right about now. Within the thematic construction of this adventure, this is the point in a trilogy where a creator would introduce an incredibly cute—albeit deadly—creature in order to sell toys.”

  Agent 27142’s face was a mask of blankness. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  God-Art shrugged. “I wouldn’t expect you to,” he replied.

  The creature noticed God-Art and Agent 27142 and interrupted them by falling to its knees. It bowed to them and cried, “My saviors! It was prophesied that a pair of twins would one day save the BeavBoks!”

  “Who—or what—are the BeavBoks?” asked God-Art.

  The creature raised a fist into the air and began to speak, but Agent 27142 cut in before the little creature had the chance to reply, saying, “If you’d have used the goggles that I offered you, you’d already know.”

  God-Art swiveled his head toward Agent 27142 without moving his body, creating a ghastly scene where his head faced backward while his body continued facing the creature. The god scowled. “I’d rather have it from the creature’s lips. Those B.I.T. contraptions don’t often tell both sides of the story.”

  The god spun his head back around to face the fuzzy little creature and said, “Go on, little one. You were just about to tell us about the BeavBoks.”

  The little creature grinned, flashing tiny, jagged teeth. It said, “Yes, yes, yes. Me and a few of my kin were brought to this reality by the B.T.T. But soon after we arrived, the B.T.T. genocided our people and wiped them all from existence. Me and my kin were supposed to be ambassadors to the B.T.T., but after our peoples were murdered, we were instead kept as artifacts in a B.T.T. zoo. Me and my kin were kept alive because our images sold merchandise to the B.T.T. children. One of my kin was a prophet, and after he received a message from the gods, he proclaimed a powerful prophecy about a pair of twins who would save my peoples. My kin believed the prophecy would come true in a matter of days. I disagreed. I escaped and found this cave to await our saviors. I hid here until I…”

  “Until you died,” God-Art finished for him, since it became clear that the BeavBok just realized that he had died.

  “Wait, if I’m dead, then how am I here right now?”

  God-Art smiled. Mischief glimmered behind his eyes. “I brought you back,” he said. “We’re going to fight the B.T.T. Want to join us?”

  The little BeavBok squealed in delight. It danced in small looping circles while twisting its hips as though it was spinning a hula hoop around its waist. “Of course! Of course! You’ve got Tick-Tick’s spear for your cause!”

  Agent 27142 smiled. “We welcome you to our service,” he said.

  God-Art looked over at Agent 27142 and said, “I think we’ve revived all your soldiers that are easily revivable. We should get moving before the B.T.T. manages to pierce the glamour I put over our ship.”

  Agent 27142 nodded. “Then let’s go.”

  Agent 27142 felt a tug at the hem of his pants. He glanced down to see the little beaver-creature yanking on his pant leg. Agent 27142 scowled. He did not like being touched by people below his station. The only exception he would happily make would be for Agent 29333. “What?” he spat.

  Tick-Tick did not seem to notice the scorn. “Well, sirs, I’m sure that the people on my home earth would like to join you in your war against the B.T.T., if you have the time to resurrect them.”

  Agent 27142 and God-Art looked at each other. A hungry look flashed between them. They both silently and simultaneously mouthed to each other, We need all the disposable lackies we can get!

  Agent 27142 patted Tick-Tick on the head and said, “We would love for your people to fight with us.”

  Agent 27142 and God-Art all but sprinted back to the ship in excitement. The resurrected soldiers—twenty members of Squadron Umbrella, thirteen members of Squadron Twelve, and sixteen members of Squadron Ampersand—and the lone BeavBok ran to try and keep up. God-Art waved his hands at the greenery camouflaging the ship. It melted away. Everyone piled aboard the ship.

  God-Art, Agent 27142, and Tick-Tick made their way to the bridge. Tick-Tick muttered his earth number to the pair. Agent 27142 lifted the ship off the ground and engaged the jump drive. The ship vibrated and jerked forward. Cosmic spots filled the view screen. A green arc of light burst from the nose of the ship and sliced a hole in the sky. The ship entered the Barrier between realities.

  Neither of the Arts had warned Tick-Tick to take a seat and fasten his safety belt. As the ship jerked forward, the momentum knocked Tick-Tick backward. He fell down the ladder at the back of the bridge and down into the hold with the soldiers.

  God-Art laughed. Things were starting to look so good for the pair that Agent 27142 could not refrain from laughing, too.

  Chapter 18

  FOILED

  “Halt! Who goes there?” demanded a behemoth of a man with thick blond hair, ruddy cheeks, and crooked, yellow teeth.

  The man’s voice held such weight behind it that Normal-Art felt every bone in his body vibrate. He already needed to urinate, and the vibrations made the sensation grow exponentially worse. He nearly moaned, but a well-timed elbow in his stomach from Ginny knocked the wind from him and stifled any moaning. The Purple Shirts behind him grabbed him by the shoulders and prevented him from toppling over in pain.

  The man stood at the end of the hallway, guarding the door that allowed access into the backstage area of the convention. Normal-Art cleverly deduced this fact because of the sign above the man’s right shoulder that read, Backstage Area: Production Crew and Pleasure Deities Only.

  Alex nodded to Bagoo. Bagoo bent his head low, and as he raised his head back up, his ghostly, translucent shape shifted, taking on the form of a beautifully ethereal woman. He floated toward the massive guard.

  “May we pass?” asked Bagoo in his best imitation of a female voice. “We are pleasure deities from a pleasure earth, and we have must thank Artheoskatergariabetrugereiinganno for the boon that his plan has bestowed upon our pantheon.”

  The behemoth arched an eyebrow. “So, you’re here for the networking orgy, too, eh?” he asked.

  Bagoo nodded.

  The behemoth frowned and then continued, “Being the patron god of guarding things is the worst gig in all of godhood. I never get to participate in the fun stuff. Go on in. Follow the signs, you can’t miss it.”

  Then he grabbed Bagoo by the upper arm. His frown deepened. He muttered, “Just, y’know, maybe send somebody out for ol’ Heimdallr at some point.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” replied Bagoo. He swept past the guard and waved for the Landing Crew to follow him. Alex nodded, and the Landing Crew marched forward, having hung back toward the end of the hall in case anything went wrong with Bagoo’s charade.

  Normal-Art walked forward, being sure to stay between two of the Purple Shirts just in case anything bad occurred as the group passed the guard. But things went right for once, and the group sauntered past the god and into the backstage area without a problem.

  They descended a flight of stairs and found themselves in a long corridor. Every few feet hung a piece of poster board with the message “Networking Orgy This Way” written in bold calligraphy. Below the words lay an equally bold arrow and pictures of humanoids engaging in acts of utter depravity.

  “Sir,” called a Purple Shirt with a smirk as he stared at one of the signs. “If you need any of us to infiltrate the networking orgy, I’ll volunteer my services.”

  Normal-Art began to chuckle, but he stopped short when he realized nobody else was amused. Alex scowled. He said, “Son, if I wanted you to try and amuse me, I would have informed you in your briefing. Keep your mouth shut unless you have something to say that’s pertinent to the mission.”

  Normal-Art shrugged his shoulde
rs and patted the kid on the shoulder. “Don’t mind him. He has no sense of humor. I thought it was funny,” he whispered.

  The group continued walking. They came to the open entrance marked for the orgy. The moans emanating from within were staggering. Normal-Art was nearly knocked off his feet. As the Landing Crew crept past, Normal-Art stopped for a few moments to gawk through the doorway. He noticed that between moans, the gods engaging in carnal acts were screaming out their own names and occupations within their pantheons. He realized this because they were wearing name tags while copulating. He shrugged. Gods were weird.

  The group walked on for another few minutes before intersecting with a hallway to their right. It ended in darkness. However, the darkness was interrupted when a flickering light appeared in the distance.

  Alex sighed. He pointed at Normal-Art. “And that will be the god-version of you, having just divulged our plan to his past-self and on his way to the networking orgy.”

  Alex turned to two of the Purple Shirts, one of them the guy who had volunteered to join the networking orgy. “Distract him,” Alex ordered. “We need a few more minutes to complete our mission. So, stay alive for at least a few more minutes to buy us some time.”

  The pair drew their Time-Phasers and twisted a knob on them. They gulped, nodded at the group, and sprinted away to confront God-Art. Before the remainder of Landing Crew could sneak away to complete the mission, the pair promptly disobeyed Alex. Fire erupted at the end of the hallway and engulfed the duo, killing them before they even had time to scream. Normal-Art shrugged. Better them than me, he thought.

  “Dammit,” muttered Alex. “I ordered them to buy us some time!”

  The fiery flicker moved toward the group from the darkness. The god attached to it giggled. “Oh, B.T.T., I am impressed with how quickly you managed to escape the arena and how tenacious you are to enter these backstage catacombs in search of past-me. The fact that you are so willing to throw away your lives to ensure my past-self’s assassination is flattering, especially when you could have escaped to live another day—unlike those of you who were caught in the arena. Having lived through this experience in my younger days, I can tell you that my past-self is now hiding somewhere you shall never find him. And considering that I don’t recall interacting with you lot at this point in my history, I’d say that means you die before making it to your target. Congratulations on dying in vain.”

  “Nooooooooooo! We failed!” screamed Alex. Normal-Art nodded, impressed by Alex’s acting ability. “We were the best hope for the Space-Time-Multinuum!”

  “But this current interaction between us has left me puzzled,” God-Art continued, completely ignoring Alex other than to point at the man. “Why would you send a mere pair of pups down this hallway to kill me after you wasted an entire squadron in the arena trying to assassinate past-me? I am deserving of at least a squadron myself. And you, one of the greatest strategists in the history of Earth 6,076, must have known that.”

  The god continued approaching. Normal-Art could see his face now. It looked like the god was working out some complicated equation. Something seemed to click in the god’s head, and he grinned. “Oh, because you just wanted to slow me down. You did not actually want them to stop me. Why not, I must ask?

  The god strummed his fingers across his chin and continued, “Hmm. I thwarted your snipers in the arena while you ran. And now I’m back here and have told my past-self every facet of your mission, which you voluntarily told me when I was in my slothful alternate-dimension-self’s body. I’m starting to think that you knew I was inside him and that you wanted me to escape, to find my past-self, and to tell him everything I know about your plot. And then you wanted to make it seem like you were still giving an effort by sending those pups to attack me. That meager assault was obviously a distraction, but a distraction for what purpose? What would you be searching for down here? Oh, wheels within wheels.”

  The god grinned. Then he said, “Oh, I get it. I know exactly what you were trying to do. Clever. And you would have gotten away with it, if only you had sent more of your whelps down here to their doom.”

  Alex looked over at the Landing Crew. Normal-Art thought he recognized panic in the officer’s eyes.

  Normal-Art shrugged. He turned to the Purple Shirts behind him and improvised. He grabbed the nearest one and began slapping him. As he slapped him over and over and over, he squealed, “You cowards! We could have killed this bastard-version of me! We could have completed our mission and I could have finally been sent home! But noooooo, you were too frightened to attack him when ordered! Instead, you let your two friends—one of them funnier than you could ever hope to be—rush to their deaths, all alone!”

  Normal-Art shoved the kid onto the ground. Then he turned back toward God-Art. God-Art’s grin was gone. Normal-Art could only hope his display had been enough to throw doubt on the god’s deduction.

  The god shook his head. “Art, you are a terrible acto-”

  God-Art never finished the sentence. Instead, Normal-Art snatched a device that was definitely not a Time-Phaser—though Art was too inobservant to notice the difference—from inside the toga of the Purple Shirt whom he had been slapping. He aimed it at God-Art’s chest and pulled the trigger. Dozens of magenta spheres flashed from the barrel and crashed into God-Art. They melted into the god’s torso.

  “Hey! A direct hit!” Normal-Art exclaimed.

  The god frowned. He said, “You absolute fool! All you accomplished was sending a tickle of indigestion through my tummy. But now I’m angrier than ever, and instead of simply murdering you, I am going to flay you alive and sew your skin onto my cloa-”

  But then the god’s threat was interrupted when he exploded into billions of tiny dots that flashed magenta and then disappeared.

  Alex turned to Normal-Art. “What the hell did you just do?”

  “Well, it was obvious that he was onto us,” said Normal-Art. “So, I took initiative. You weren’t doing so, so somebody had to.”

  “What the hell did you just do?” repeated Alex.

  “I-I shot the god-version of me with one of your agency’s stupid guns that devolve things. And I stopped him. And now we can complete our mission uninterrupted. And to be honest, we should have done that in the first place when he appeared out of my neck.”

  “That is not a Time-Phaser, you fool. If you’d have read your briefing dossier, you would have known.”

  “Huh?”

  Alex pointed at the Purple Shirts surrounding Normal-Art. He said, “This squadron of Purple Shirts has three engineers attached to it. And engineers do not carry Time-Phasers. They carry a modified version of B.I.T. weaponry that spreads molecules across the Space-Time-Multinuum, which they normally use when they need to clear out a lot of mass really quickly without sending the entire mass to a single different place in time. It’s called a Chronal-Dispersion-Shotgun, and they do not use such a tool on a god who specializes in resurrection!”

  Normal-Art glanced down at the gun. Now that he studied it a bit more, he realized it was shaped much differently than the Time-Phasers. It looked like a numeral two with a thin barrel poking out of the base. When looking at the knobs, there were settings for Past, Present, Future, and All-Molecule Dispersion, whereas Time-Phasers had knobs that determined the timing of its effects and whether something needed to be devolved or evolved or frozen in time.

  “What setting is that gun on?” demanded Alex.

  “Looks like it’s set to All-Molecule Dispersion,” replied Normal-Art.

  Alex sighed a furious sigh. “Do you realize that you just sent the god’s molecules careening across the past, present, and future?”

  Normal-Art shrugged. “And in doing so, I got him out of our way. Now let’s finish our mission so I can be sent home to my couch.”

  Bagoo screamed in rage. “You fool! Don’t you understand how that could be a bad thing to do to a god of resurrection?”

  Normal-Art took a moment to think, and the
n he said, “No, not really.”

  Older-Art slapped him upside the back of his head. “His molecules sent to the past can reform in the past and then warn his current version that our actual plan is deeper than a mere foiled assassination attempt.”

  Bagoo also slapped Normal-Art upside the back of the head and screamed once more in rage. “Exactly! We are good and truly screwed.”

  Older-Art smirked. “God-Me told me one time about something called a deus ex machina. Where something unexpected comes out of nowhere to save the hero of a story. What would you call one that comes out of nowhere to completely screw the heroes? Deus sex machina? If so, I feel like that’s what we just experienced.”

  Alex strode forward. He slapped both Older- and Normal-Art. “Be quiet so the real heroes can save us.”

  Chapter 19

  GATHERING FURRY RECRUITS

  Agent 27142 steered the ship toward the surface of Earth 798,098. Blocky brick factory buildings with dozens of gigantic chimneys seemed to cover every square inch of the ground, stretching into the distance and past the horizon. “Horizon” was a generous term, since thick clouds of black smog billowed from the chimneys with such ferocity that visibility was difficult more than a few hundred feet ahead.

  Tick-Tick leaned over Agent 27142’s shoulder and stared out the view screen. The creature gasped and then let out a moaning wail. “What happened to my home?” he cried.

  Agent 27142 sighed. The bridge had been much more serene when the BeavBok had fallen below decks. Agent 27142 said, “What do you mean?”

  Tick-Tick’s voice grew faster and higher-pitched. “It was forests and streams and wildlife. This is wrong. All wrong.”

  God-Art shrugged. He said, “Well, look on the bright side. With all this smog, I bet the sunsets now are more beautiful than ever.”