And Now, Time Travel

by Christopher Brimmage

  A few moments later, he trudged back through the door to the bridge and asked for directions.

  *

  Normal-Art spent the next two days living up to his word. After 29333 escorted him down to the Holo-Scouting Deck, she input the coordinates and the time—ensuring she brought him to a period before God-Art had shown up on his doorstep—and left him in his apartment to sit on the couch. He sat staring at the frozen screen on his television, his mind drifting into a state of delicious numbness.

  About three times over the next two days, Sprinkle Buns’ voice sounded over the intercom to let him know that he needed to clear out so that the scouts might use the deck to prepare for future missions.

  “Go to hell, Sprinkle Buns! And you can tell those damned scouts to go to hell, too!” he screamed every time she interrupted his lounging. “If they want me out of here, then they can come in here and remove me by force. But they should know that I got me a full bladder and a penchant for violence.”

  Nobody ever came in to force his hand—and thus, nobody ever discovered that he was all bluster—until nearly two days later when 29333 refused to heed his warnings of violence and wanton urination. She entered.

  Normal-Art stood. He balled his fists at his side. “Leave me alone,” he ordered. “I’m not bothering anybody down here.”

  29333 stalked over to his side. “You mean other than the Purple Shirts whose scouting duties you have impeded?”

  “Exactly. Other than them.”

  “What about Sprinkle Buns?”

  “Fine. Sprinkle Buns, too.”

  “And me.”

  “You?” asked Normal-Art. “What do you have to do with it?”

  29333 sighed. “You have inconvenienced me. I’ve been ordered to come fetch you because for some reason the Captain thinks you might listen to me. He thinks there’s a trust between us or something. Probably because I was the one who first showed you that this place exists.”

  Normal-Art stared at his feet. “But I don’t want to go.”

  29333 sighed once more. “Well, that’s too bad. You threatened to use your ‘full bladder and penchant for violence’ against me, and I do not take kindly to threats. I will hurt you severely if you do not come with me right this second. You shall receive no further warning.”

  Normal-Art sighed. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  29333 frowned. “That’s disappointing. I thought you would put up a fight and I would get to hurt you. In other timestreams on other realities, such violence between us always ends with coitus. I must admit that I was slightly curious.”

  Normal-Art stared at his feet for a few more moments, and then it dawned on him what she had just said. “Wait, what?” he asked.

  But she was already halfway to the door. He shrugged and followed her.

  *

  When Normal-Art and 29333 arrived back on the bridge, Captain King Solomon stood from the Captain’s chair.

  “Welcome back!” proclaimed the Captain. “Please, please, take a seat. But way over there, as far away from me as you can. You smell terrible, and we are about to witness this ship’s finest achievement. I would rather not taint the memory.”

  29333 walked to her station. Normal-Art glanced around the room. The gang was all present: Ginny looking doe-eyed and sleepy, Older-Art looking dopey and half-witted, Drillbot looking metal and magnificent, Bagoo looking terrifying and gaseous, Leif son of Erik looking blond and bulky, 29333 looking stern and intelligent, Captain King Solomon looking regal and wise, First Officer Alex looking strategic and commanding, and a dozen Purple Shirts looking nervous and expendable.

  Normal-Art strode to the benches at the back of the bridge on which Ginny and Older-Art sat and near which Drillbot stood. There was little space left on the bench occupied by Ginny and Older-Art, so to be annoying, Normal-Art wedged himself into the small opening next to them, bumping them aside to give himself more room. He smirked because there were two other benches nearby that were both empty. The couple sighed in annoyance.

  The trio sat in silence. The officers sat in silence. Drillbot stood in silence, though periodically exhaust fired from a gasket and the whistle echoed across the bridge. Normal-Art glanced out the view screen. Something looked different about the earth, but he could not quite figure out what looked different. If his perception skills were not severely lacking, he would have realized that the Infinity Vortex had disappeared from the planet.

  Captain King Solomon checked the chronometer above the view screen on the ship. “T-minus two minutes,” announced the Captain.

  Normal-Art wanted to cut the silent tension. Every ounce of his being poked and prodded him to do something annoying and ruin the moment for everyone. Ginny must have sensed this in him, because she placed a hand on his thigh. It was a firm grip with no hint of affection. Normal-Art thought better of doing something annoying and instead sat in silence.

  And then two things happened:

  First, a bright flash appeared in the ether directly in front of the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker. The aftermath of the flash looked like someone had taken a cosmic dagger and sliced a gash in the blackness of space. From the gash appeared a ship shaped like a numeral eight. It towed behind it and through the gash colossal tree trunk after colossal tree trunk. There seemed to be no end in sight to the trees appearing from the gash.

  “We have incoming!” called out 29333 in warning to the crew. Normal-Art sighed at the unnecessariness of it, as the string of tree trunks was impossible not to see.

  Captain King Solomon waved the warning away with the back of his hand. “We can do naught about it now. We must cling to the hope that our cloak will hide us. Our priority is to ensure our plan takes effect. Our personal safety is secondary.”

  And then the second thing occurred. Looking down on the earth from their cloaked position in outer space, the crew could see a string of green numbers and symbols begin to appear in the atmosphere. More and more numbers and symbols appeared until the entire earth was covered in them. These symbols then began turning rainbow in color. They burst out into space in a spectacular show of dancing numerical rainbows. The rainbows twirled, swirled, formed into new numbers and symbols, and then blasted away to dance amongst the stars, all the while birthing new rainbows that exploded from them in different directions, which in turn birthed even more new rainbows.

  The rainbows covered everything. Then they all disappeared into the ether. A gong sounded across the heavens. It was brief and distant, and then it disappeared without echo. At its noise, Captain King Solomon cheered.

  “That’s the sound!” screamed the Captain.

  “What sound?” screamed back Normal-Art.

  “The sign that our change to the math worked. We set it up so that it would be nearly identical to the sound that Artheoskatergariabetrugereiinganno programmed into his equation, but different on a microscopic level evident only to those who know what to listen for.”

  “Wonderful. When’s the parade?” quipped Normal-Art.

  Captain King Solomon frowned. “Well, there won’t be a parade. Only those of us on this ship and B.T.T. officials with high enough classified access will ever know what we accomplished. We don’t want it leaking to Artheoskatergariabetrugereiinganno or anybody equally bad that he didn’t achieve his goal. He’d find a way to go back in time and change it so that he did.”

  Normal-Art slapped himself across the forehead. “It was just an expression. I know we there won’t be a parade.”

  Captain King Solomon shrugged. “Well, it was a terrible expression, then. I’m starting to think the idioms during your natural lifetime must be so random as to not make any sense. But my opinion on you and your time period matters not. What matters is that our mission succeeded. And now we can exit this reality!”

  With that, Normal-Art leapt to his feet and cheered.

  But his cheer was interrupted when the eight-shaped ship jerked forward and began circling round and round the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker so that the thousands upon tho
usands of tree trunks attached to it via leash wrapped like a cocoon around the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Captain King Solomon. “I thought we were cloaked!”

  Alex sighed. “You’ve been through this time-loop before, sir. You know what’s happening. There’s no need for the dramatics. We’re being attacked. Wait for communication from the intruders.”

  And in a few minutes, they received it. A voice echoed through the bridge that caused Normal-Art’s bowels to turn to water.

  “This is Agent 27142 of the Bureau of Interdimensional Travel. I am here to make members of your crew answer for the crimes they committed against me and, more importantly, against the Multiverse. Hand over my former prisoner, Art, and his cursed robot companion.”

  Normal-Art stood and pleaded to the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker crew, “Wait, no! You can’t give me to him! Please!”

  Captain King Solomon ignored Normal-Art. He replied, “This is Captain King Solomon of the Bureau of Time Travel. My ship has no quarrel with the B.I.T. If I hand over Arthur and Drillbot to you, do I have your assurance that you will leave in peace and do no harm to my crew?”

  A cackling laugh filled the bridge. Then Agent 27142 replied, “Oh, I will agree not to harm you. But the creatures I brought with me—upon whom your agency committed genocide—feel quite differently. They will most certainly harm you.”

  Chapter 27

  TIME TO ATTACK

  Agent 27142 steered the ship out from the barrier between universes and time. His ship appeared in the vast blackness of outer space above Earth 8,669. The monstrous tree trunks tied behind Agent 27142 and God-Art’s ship emerged one at a time from the portal behind them. To an onlooker from this author’s time period and earth, their appearance would be reminiscent of one of those black snake fireworks sold to kids on holiday, where upon setting the small black disc aflame, a seemingly unending snake of black ash grows.

  Agent 27142 immediately identified his quarry without even needing to check the ship’s sensors. To an untrained eye, the stars in outer space seem randomly strewn across the black horizon. But to Agent 27142’s trained eye, he noticed repeated patterns amongst the stars, which is always the sign of an older-model ship’s attempt at cloaking—identifiable because it mirrors the surrounding blackness of space rather than replicating the star patterns that it is blocking.

  God-Art said, “Oh, my. We’re about to see something fantastic.”

  Agent 27142 grinned and pointed toward the cloaked B.T.T. ship that lay ahead of them. He said, “Yes, we are. We’re about to see the bastards pay for what they did to me.”

  God-Art sighed. “No, no, no. Of course, that’s going to happen. I’m talking about something much more important.”

  And with that, God-Art reached over and jerked the stick so that the ship turned to face the planet below. Agent 27142 began to curse the god, but he stopped himself when he noticed something odd happening on the planet.

  In the atmosphere surrounding the planet, a small, green numeral eight appeared. It wiggled and wobbled, then its outline grew fuzzy. It burst into a longer string of numerals, which in turn wiggled, wobbled, grew fuzzy, and burst into even more numbers. Within seconds, this process repeated itself over and over until the entire atmosphere was covered in green numerals and mathematical symbols. Then the spaces in between each numeral and mathematical symbol filled with more numerals and mathematical symbols. A few seconds later, when the math was so opaque that the earth was completely obscured, the colors transformed from green into rainbow. The rainbow-colored math exploded out into the blackness of space, launching in every direction from the earth.

  The rainbows danced across the heavens. They swirled and replicated and blasted across the darkness. Soon, rainbow numerals covered everything in this reality.

  And then the rainbows collapsed in on themselves, and the reality returned to normal. A gong sounded across the heavens. There was no echo, and silence filled the bridge of the stolen B.T.T. ship in a way that felt heavier than any silence Agent 27142 had ever before experienced. As Agent 27142 studied the stars and the blackness of space before him, it all looked so mundane and boring compared to what he had just witnessed.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a wild cheer from dozens of people. He glanced over at God-Art and realized that all the cheers were originating from the god. Dozens of extra mouths had formed across God-Art’s neck, and he was screaming in delight from all of them.

  God-Art slapped Agent 27142 on the back and said, “You’ve just witnessed my greatest accomplishment, and a major step toward my ultimate domination of the Multiverse! From this point forward, no longer is the infinite Multiverse constantly being raised to the power of infinity. At this exact point, the Multiverse is reduced to regular infinity, something that is completely tamable! Huzzah!”

  Agent 27142 frowned. He said, “Just so you don’t think anything has changed between us, I will be bringing you to justice when we are finished here. And you’ve only yourself to blame that there will be no reality splitting off from this one where I fail to do so.”

  God-Art’s grinned. It spread to literally cover his face from ear to ear. The god said, “And just so you don’t forget, I’ve battled much worse than you, and I’ve never been stopped before.”

  Agent 27142 began to reply, but then a nasally voice crackled over the intercom. It said, “Umm, this is President Clearland. Are you going to move any time soon? We are holding steady as best we can, but the planet’s gravity is causing our ships to begin drifting toward it. Please advise.”

  Agent 27142 swallowed his anger and jammed his finger down on the intercom button. “A cosmic event distracted us for a moment, but we are now back on track.”

  And with that, he gunned the engine and aimed at the cloaked behemoth on the horizon. The scale of the B.T.T.’s dirigible was enormous, larger even than the B.I.T. carrier-class ship that Agent 27142 had commanded before its destruction in the battle over Earth 55,777.

  But Agent 27142 did not let the opponent’s size deter him. He zoomed around and around the cloaked ship, leading the thousands of sequoia-ships tethered to him in wide circles so that their ropes wrapped around the vessel. Within the span of a few minutes, he essentially mummified the B.T.T. ship with sequoias and ropes. For the first time, Agent 27142 appreciated the scale of the BeavBok army that had accompanied him on this journey. He powered down his engines and toggled his ship into standby mode.

  Agent 27142 pressed his finger down on the intercom and said, “President Clearland, await my signal to attack. I will first be making contact with our enemy.”

  The squeaky voice replied, “Aye, aye.”

  Agent 27142’s fingers danced across the console as he changed the frequency of his ship’s communicator. Soon, a ringing chimed over the intercom as he waited for the cloaked ship to answer his call.

  The ringing stopped, and Agent 27142 could hear the type of random background noises he would expect to hear on the bridge of a ship—heavy breathing, people shuffling, consoles beeping. He interpreted these noises as a sign of connection and took the opportunity to assert his dominance. Without waiting for a greeting from his opponent, he proclaimed, “This is Agent 27142 of the Bureau of Interdimensional Travel. I am here to make members of your crew answer for the crimes they committed against me and, more importantly, against the Multiverse. Hand over my former prisoner, Art, and his cursed robot companion.”

  Nearly immediately, he heard the whining of his former prisoner in the background, “Wait, no! You can’t give me to him! Please!”

  A much louder voice called over the intercom, “This is Captain King Solomon of the Bureau of Time Travel. My ship has no quarrel with the B.I.T. If I hand over Arthur and Drillbot to you, do I have your assurance that you will leave in peace and do no harm to my crew?”

  Agent 27142 cackled into the microphone. Then he replied, “Oh, I will agree not to harm you. But the creatures I brought with me—upon who
m your agency committed genocide—feel quite differently. They will most certainly harm you.”

  Agent 27142 cut the communication line with the encircled ship. Then he re-established contact with the BeavBoks. He jammed his finger down upon the communicator button and yelled, “Attack!”

  *

  In preparation for the battle, Agent 27142 pressed a bubbled glass dome over the top of the purple space suit that he had found belowdecks. Once it snapped into place, he heard his respirators engage. He heard only the sound of his own breathing for a moment, and then he stuck his tongue out to click the short-range intercom button on the controls that dangled to the sides of his mouth. The noise of his surroundings filled his helmet. He glanced over at God-Art and probed, “You’re sure you don’t need protection?”

  The god shrugged. “The vacuum of space might be a tad uncomfortable at first, but I’ll get used to it. I always do.”

  Agent 27142 shrugged. Then he suppressed a smirk when he looked down at Henry, who was now perched in Agent 27142’s holster and prepared for battle, which he had done by donning a miniature space suit that mimicked Agent 27142’s—purple layers of fabric covering most of his body, a tiny bubbled helmet over his head, out of which his antennae poked from little holes that had been knocked through the helmet, and a tiny jetpack and artificial respiratory system that hung from the back and front of the suit, respectively.

  Agent 27142 did not even bother to suppress the smirk any longer when he glanced at Beverly, who was crouched on God-Art’s shoulder in a space suit that matched Henry’s. These outer-space-safe B.T.T. suits were left by the ship’s previous crew in the cargo hold, and when Agent 27142 had rushed belowdecks to don one a few moments ago, these two jump totems had insisted on receiving their own. The B.I.T. agents in the cargo hold had rapidly cobbled these tiny suits together from scraps of excess suits down there.