And Now, Time Travel

by Christopher Brimmage

  He finished giving instructions to the clean-up and medical crews. He then immediately jammed the throttle on his jetpack and aimed for the top of the building with the neon red Olympus sign on its top. A blue spotlight shone into the sky from near the sign. The B.T.S. Unicorn Husker floated over the building, engaged in an epic struggle with the pink and blue bears.

  On his way to the rooftop, Alex watched as a black blade drifted up into the air toward the cosmic bears. Then he watched it miss the bears and fall back down. He sighed. The blue spotlight then erupted deeper and wider and enveloped the bears, both of which turned and began drifting toward the source of the light like a couple of hypnotized sheep.

  Alex landed on the rooftop. Despite his injured ankle, he sprinted to Younger-Arthur, who sat on the ground with his arms crossed. He looked like he was about to cry. Alex heard him mutter, “I just want to go home.”

  Alex grabbed Younger-Arthur by the armpits and hauled the heavyset man up onto his feet.

  “Hey! What gives? I failed. Just let me die and be wiped from existence in peace,” Younger-Arthur demanded.

  Alex whispered into Younger-Arthur’s ear, “You haven’t failed yet, you fool. Now fulfill your purpose for being here. When I fly you up there, remove the saber from your older-self and stab the bears with it.”

  Alex did not wait for Younger-Arthur to ask whatever stupid question he was almost certainly going to ask. Instead, he wrapped his legs around Younger-Arthur, gripping the other man tight, and then jammed the throttle on his jetpack. The pair flew into the air. Younger-Arthur missed the saber.

  Alex sighed. The pair landed near the edge of the rooftop on the roof’s opposite side. Then Alex jammed the throttle again. Younger-Arthur missed again.

  * * *

  10 This is obviously Alex’s attempt at pluralizing Chronos ex Machina. If it so happens to be declined incorrectly, it is obviously due to Alex’s rudimentary grasp of Ancient Greek and Latin rather than this author’s, for this author was a Classics major in college who hasn’t translated either language in years, and thus would obviously never do so incorrectly. Obviously.

  Chapter 45

  FINALLY!

  On the third try, Normal-Art squealed in delight. He grasped the handle of the saber and yanked it out of Older-Art. He felt like King Arthur removing Excalibur from an ugly, fleshy, lumpy stone. Blood sprayed into the air after the saber, but Normal-Art ignored it.

  What he could not ignore, however, was the fact that the intensity of the blue light dropped significantly when he removed the blade.

  The glazed look in the bears’ eyes began to dissipate. But Normal-Art did not give them time to gather their bearings. Or rather, Alex did not, because Alex blasted himself and Normal-Art toward the bears.

  Normal-Art extended the blade out in front of himself. He closed his eyes.

  He opened them when Alex landed them safely on the rooftop. Alex released Normal-Art before collapsing to the ground. Alex lay panting and gripping his ankle, which appeared to be turned the wrong way. Normal-Art shrugged.

  Then he looked down at the end of the onyx saber and squealed in satisfaction. The pink bear was impaled facing the hilt. The blue bear was impaled facing the opposite direction on the end of the blade. Between them, the blade had passed through God-Art’s head. Normal-Art squealed once more in delight at that.

  “Drop the blade, fast,” ordered Alex.

  Normal-Art did so. Alex adjusted the settings on the weaponized cylinder he always carried with him. A bow made from solid light flashed into existence from the ends of the object. Alex aimed at the shish-ka-trio and fired at each of them, freezing them in time.

  “Drop them into the Reality Lantern,” ordered Alex. “And then I’ll place that into stasis, too, just to be safe.”

  Normal-Art sat down on the rooftop. He said, “You do it. I’m tired.”

  Alex sighed. He pointed at his ankle. “As you can see, I’m a little injured here. You’re going to have to do it, or so help me gods, I’ll place you in stasis and throw you in that thing right along with them.”

  Normal-Art sighed in annoyance. He pushed himself up onto his feet, picked up the saber, and walked over to the lantern. He stood on his tiptoes, reached the blade up as high as he could, and tossed it into the lantern. It dropped just between Older-Art’s legs and splashed into the flaming liquid within. It drifted to the bottom.

  “Not get your older-self down from there so he is out of my way,” ordered Alex.

  Normal-Art shrugged and did so, picking up God-Art’s discarded dagger from the ground and using it to hack through the shackles that held Older-Art in place. Older-Art fell from the side of the lantern and onto Normal-Art. The older man lay unconscious and growing paler by the second as he leaked blood. His legs were no longer covered in flesh. They were now only bones. Normal-Art knew that this was due to their being inside the Reality Lantern.

  Older-Art opened his eyes just long enough to say, “You’ve got nothing to worry about when you’re in my place. It doesn’t hurt at all. I can’t even feel my legs.”

  “What about the wound in your torso?” asked Normal-Art.

  Older-Art opened his mouth to reply, but instead closed his eyes and returned to unconsciousness.

  Normal-Art sat down and sighed. Alex fired his bow at the Reality Lantern, freezing it in time.

  Alex yelled, “Now put pressure on your older-self’s stab wound! Keep him from bleeding out!”

  Normal-Art sighed once more. He whined, “God! It’s like I have to do everything here!”

  He pressed his hands down on the wound the saber had left in Older-Art. Alex contacted the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker to report the mission a success and to request extraction.

  Chapter 46

  BACK IN HELL

  One second, Ginny was staring into the gaping maw of the pink blob. The next second, she felt an incredible pain in her back, much worse than the time Art had stabbed her with that cursed onyx saber back on Earth 1,000,000. The second after that, she saw only blackness and felt nothing.

  *

  Ginny opened her eyes and realized she was lying on dusty ground. It smelled like dry rocks. She sighed. She had been here before, and she knew what it meant. She was on the outskirts of Hell. She must be dead.

  She stood. She glanced left and right. She was in a lonely cave that seemed to stretch on forever in both directions, one direction slanting upward and the other downward. Knowing it would be useless to try walking in any other direction, she walked in the direction that sloped downward. Torches lined the walls and their flames created shadows that danced across the floor. She knew that the tunnel would get narrower and narrower as it went deeper into the ground, but that it would eventually open onto a series of gigantic caverns, each marking a different Circle of Hell.

  Ginny followed the path downward and reached an arched stone gateway. The first time she had been here after her first death, she had studied it. It was decorated with reliefs depicting every type of torture imaginable. At its peak, the gateway was inscribed with the words Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, which translated to Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. She did not slow to study it this time. Instead, she merely shuddered, and then she passed beneath the gate and into Hell proper.

  She meandered her way down the passage and soon arrived at a cave with a stagnant lake in its middle. She knew what to expect from this cave, so she sprinted around the lake’s edge and into the tunnel on the far side of the cave. She dove inside just as a geyser of flames erupted from the depths of the lake and filled the cavern. She sighed in relief, got to her feet, and continued walking. A few minutes later, she ducked when three imps flew by over her head. They were each wearing a chef’s hat and carrying a wicker basket, and they were engaged so deeply in a debate with one another about the evening’s menu that they never even noticed her.

  When she eventually reached the next cave, which was the antechamber to Hell proper, she waited to emerge from
the tunnel until thousands of men and women sprinted past. They were chasing a demon that looked like a horned bumblebee carrying a black banner in its forelegs. Twelve dark angels with six wings each buzzed through the sky, flittering amongst the legions of sprinting men and women and raking the blades of their curved scimitars across the backs of any stragglers.

  Once the horde disappeared around the bend in the distance, Ginny trudged through the cavern. She ignored the squishing and scratching beneath her feet. The floor here was made of worms with sharpened teeth. They had terrified her the first time she laid eyes upon them, but now that she knew what to expect, they just seemed tawdry. She stomped on a few of them and then carried on.

  After walking for what felt like hours, her feet began to squish in mud, which she knew meant that she had reached the first of the major bottlenecks into hell: the River Acheron.

  Ginny glanced left and right and found what she was looking for. A long series of docks stretched along the shore to her right. She located the dock with the longest line and moved to queue in the rear of it.

  During her first journey into Hell, she had avoided the line for Charon’s ferry. She hated lines so much that she had jumped in one of the other, shorter queues, even though it meant she would reach her eternal punishment faster. But she had changed since her first experience in Hell. After her last experience, she knew that being stuck in a frozen lake for eternity was at least twice as bad as standing in a line for a while. If standing in line here could slow down that inevitable experience even a little, she would be happy to do so.

  Thus, she found the back of the queue and made small talk with the people around her.

  “Hi, I’m Ginny,” she said to the man queued in front of her. He was short and had combed his hair over his immense bald pate. His nose was bulbous and his cheeks overlarge, giving him the look of a horribly nervous bulldog.

  “Name’s Bob,” said the man. “Don’t quite understand why I’m down here.”

  “Probably the same reason as the rest of us, Bob,” replied Ginny. “You were a shit in life. And now you’re getting flushed.”

  The queue moved forward. Only a few thousand people left in front of me, she thought. With any luck, this will take years.

  Bob sighed. “I’d have to disagree,” he replied. “I made one tiny mistake in my twenties. I drove one time after having too much to drink. I paid for it, though! The kid never walked again, but I took care of the hospital bills. Even went to church every Sunday afterward. And I tithed every week!”

  Ginny shrugged. “Looks like you should’ve spent all that time and money on something else, huh?”

  Bob sighed again. Ginny wished some better company would show up soon.

  After a few hours, the queue moved forward once more. She began to step forward. But just when her foot was about to hit the mud, it froze.

  “What the hell?” she muttered.

  Chapter 47

  FORWARD AND THEN BACKWARD AND THEN FORWARD AGAIN

  “Huh?” Bob asked.

  “Something’s wrong,” replied Ginny. “I can’t move.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Bob. “Look, we’re all stuck down here. You can’t pretend you’re sick to get out of here. It doesn’t work that way. I tried, and nobody cares.”

  “.evom t’nac I,” replied Ginny. “.gnorw s’gnihtemoS”

  “Look, if you’re going to speak gibberish, then I can’t help you,” replied Bob.

  But Ginny could not understand him. Because his words sounded jumbled, like they were coming out backwards. And then she felt a sharp pain in her stomach, and everything began moving in reverse.

  *

  .derettum ehs ”?lleh eht tahW“

  .ezorf ti ,dum eht tih ot tuoba saw toof reh nehw tsuj tuB .drawrof pets ot nageb ehS .erom ecno drawrof devom eueuq eht ,sruoh wef a retfA

  .noos pu wohs dluow ynapmoc retteb emos dehsiw ynniG .niaga dehgis boB

  ”?huh ,esle gnihtemos no yenom dna emit taht lla tneps ev’dluohs uoy ekil skooL“ .deggurhs ynniG

  ”!keew yreve dehtit I dnA .drawretfa yadnuS yreve hcruhc ot tnew nevE .sllib latipsoh eht fo erac koot I tub ,niaga deklaw reven dik ehT !hguoht ,ti rof diap I .knird ot hcum oot gnivah retfa emit eno evord I .seitnewt ym ni ekatsim ynit eno edam I“ .deilper eh ”,eergasid ot evah d’I“ .dehgis boB

  .sraey ekat lliw siht ,kcul yna htiW .thguoht ehs ,em fo tnorf ni tfel elpoep dnasuoht wef a ylnO .drawrof devom eueuq ehT

  ”.dehsulf gnitteg er’uoy won dnA .efil ni tihs a erew uoY“ .ynniG deilper ”,boB ,su fo tser eht sa nosaer emas eht ylbaborP“

  ”.ereh nwod m’I yhw dnatsrednu etiuq t’noD“ .nam eht dias ”,boB s’emaN“

  .godllub suovren ylbirroh a fo kool eht mih gnivig ,egralrevo skeehc sih dna suoblub saw eson siH .etap dlab esnemmi sih revo riah sih debmoc dah dna trohs saw eH .reh fo tnorf ni deueuq nam eht ot dias ehs ”,ynniG m’I ,iH“

  .reh dnuora elpoep eht htiw klat llams edam dna eueuq eht fo kcab eht dnuof ehs ,suhT

  .os od ot yppah eb dluow ehs ,elttil a neve ecneirepxe elbativeni taht nwod wols dluoc ereh enil ni gnidnats fI .elihw a rof enil a ni gnidnats sa dab sa eciwt tsael ta saw ytinrete rof ekal nezorf a ni kcuts gnieb taht wenk ehs ,ecneirepxe tsal reh retfA .lleH ni ecneirepxe tsrif reh ecnis degnahc dah ehs tuB .retsaf tnemhsinup lanrete reh hcaer dluow ehs tnaem ti hguoht neve ,seueuq retrohs ,rehto eht fo eno ni depmuj dah ehs taht hcum os senil detah ehS .yrref s’norahC rof enil eht dediova dah ehs ,lleH otni yenruoj tsrif reh gniruD

  .ti fo raer eht ni eueuq ot devom dna enil tsegnol eht htiw kcod eht detacol ehS .thgir reh ot erohs eht gnola dehcterts skcod fo seires gnol A .rof gnikool saw ehs tahw dnuof dna thgir dna tfel decnalg ynniG

  .norehcA reviR eht :lleh otni skcenelttob rojam eht fo tsrif eht dehcaer dah ehs taht tnaem wenk ehs hcihw ,dum ni hsiuqs ot nageb teef reh ,sruoh ekil tlef tahw rof gniklaw retfA

  .no deirrac neht dna meht fo wef a no depmots ehS .yrdwat demees tsuj yeht ,tcepxe ot tahw wenk ehs taht won tub ,meht nopu seye dial ehs emit tsrif eht reh deifirret dah yehT .hteet deneprahs htiw smrow fo edam saw ereh roolf ehT .teef reh htaeneb gnihctarcs dna gnihsiuqs eht derongi ehS .nrevac eht hguorht degdurt ynniG ,ecnatsid eht ni dneb eht dnuora deraeppasid edroh eht ecnO

  .srelggarts yna fo skcab eht ssorca sratimics devruc rieht fo sedalb eht gnikar dna nemow dna nem gnitnirps fo snoigel eht tsgnoma gnirettilf ,yks eht hguorht dezzub hcae sgniw xis htiw slegna krad evlewT .sgelerof sti ni rennab kcalb a gniyrrac eebelbmub denroh a ekil dekool taht nomed a gnisahc erew yehT .tsap detnirps nemow dna nem fo sdnasuoht litnu lennut eht morf egreme ot detiaw ehs ,reporp lleH ot rebmahcetna eht saw hcihw ,evac txen eht dehcaer yllautneve ehs nehW

  .reh deciton neve reven yeht taht unem s’gnineve eht tuoba rehtona eno htiw etabed a ni ylpeed os degagne erew yeht dna ,teksab rekciw a gniyrrac dna tah s’fehc a gniraew hcae erew yehT .daeh reh revo yb welf spmi eerht nehw dekcud ehs ,retal setunim wef A .gniklaw deunitnoc dna ,teef reh ot tog ,feiler ni dehgis ehS .nrevac eht dellif dna ekal eht fo shtped eht morf detpure semalf fo resyeg a sa tsuj edisni evod ehS .evac eht fo edis raf eht no lennut eht otni dna egde s’ekal eht dnuora detnirps ehs os ,evac siht morf tcepxe ot tahw wenk ehS .elddim sti ni ekal tnangats a htiw evac a ta devirra noos dna egassap eht nwod yaw reh derednaem ehS

  .reporp lleH otni dna etag eht htaeneb dessap ehs neht dna ,deredduhs ylerem ehs ,daetsnI .emit siht ti yduts ot wols ton did ehS .ereh retne ohw ey ,epoh lla nodnabA ot detalsnart hcihw ,etartni’hc iov ,aznareps engo etaicsaL sdrow eht htiw debircsni saw yawetag eht ,kaep sti tA .elbanigami erutrot fo epyt yreve gnitciped sfeiler htiw detaroced saw tI .ti deiduts dah ehs ,htaed tsrif reh retfa ereh neeb dah ehs emit tsrif ehT .yawetag enots dehcra na dehcaer dna drawnwod htap eht dewollof ynniG

  .lleH fo elcriC tnereffid a gnikram hcae ,snrevac citnagig fo seires a otno nepo yllautneve dluow ti taht tub ,dnuorg eht otni repeed tnew ti sa reworran dna reworran teg dluow lennut eht taht wenk ehS .roolf eht ssorca decnad taht swodahs detaerc semalf rieht dna sl
law eht denil sehcroT .drawnwod depols taht noitcerid eht ni deklaw ehs ,noitcerid rehto yna ni gniklaw yrt ot sselesu eb dluow ti gniwonK .drawnwod rehto eht dna drawpu gnitnals noitcerid eno ,snoitcerid htob ni reverof no hcterts ot demees taht evac ylenol a ni saw ehS .thgir dna tfel decnalg ehS .doots ehS

  .daed eb tsum ehS .lleH fo strikstuo eht no saw ehS .tnaem ti tahw wenk ehs dna ,erofeb ereh neeb dah ehS .dehgis ehS .skcor yrd ekil dellems tI .dnuorg ytsud no gniyl saw ehs dezilaer dna seye reh denepo ynniG

  *

  Ginny opened her eyes. She was no longer in Hell. She was no longer in the cave. Her world was no longer moving backwards.

  Before her stood a grizzled old man wearing a marigold B.T.T. officer’s uniform covered by a white doctor’s coat. He had a short-cropped ginger beard and the buggiest eyes Ginny had ever seen on a human. He held out a hand to her, and she shook it.

  “Hi,” he spat. “Name’s Doctor Randy. Some call me Randy the Saw. But I just prefer Doctor Randy. I’m the Chief Medical Officer on the Husker.”

  “H-Hi,” said Ginny. “I’m Ginny. What’s happening? I was dead.”

  Randy shrugged and said, “First Officer Alexandros ho Megas ordered a medical crew to the battlefield. He demanded time be reversed on you, which has resulted in your resurrection. You may feel disoriented at first. Stress may cause you to re-age or a time bubble might pop somewhere inside you, leading to internal hemorrhaging. If that happens, you come right to me and I’ll get you patched up. Y’know, if you can make it in time.”

  Ginny scratched her head. She was confused. “I’m confused,” she said.

  Randy frowned. “You dense or something?” he asked. “You new to the B.T.T.? It’s quite simple—if you’re important enough, we’ll use our vast resources to resurrect you. But the weaponry we use for such resurrections borrows time from the end of the Space-Time-Multinuum. Do it too many times, and it’s extremely bad for everyone. So, if you’re not somebody incredibly important, there’s pretty much no coming back for you.”