GENESIX: THE TRILOGY

by Greg Logan

  Quentin said, “It’s not going to come to that, because you are stopping your activities, now.”

  “What, you two are going to stop me?” He raised one hand and it burst into flame. To Cosmo, he said, “You even try to pull one of your Jedi mind tricks on me and I’ll roast you to ashes.”

  Quentin said, “Do you really want to challenge me?”

  “I’m tired of livin’ like a rat. I’m tired of letting these people, these sheep,” he roared the word, “live like kings while we, who could easily be the kings, live like rats. What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  Snake said, “You gotta stop burning buildings. You gotta stop stealing. Simple as that.”

  Quentin turned to face him. “You challenge me and I’ll turn you into fried reptile. Now, back away.”

  “Don’t piss me off,” Snake growled at him.

  Cosmo threw a fireball at Snake. The fireball stopped, as though an invisible barrier stood in front of him.

  Cosmo knew where it came from. It was one of Quentin’s telekinetic shields. Cosmo turned and threw a fireball at Quentin, but it stopped in front of him just as it had in front of Snake.

  Suddenly, Cosmo learned the folly of turning his back on Snake, and just how deceptively fast Snake could move. But a little too late to do anything about it.

  Snake was suddenly behind him, grabbing him by one shoulder and spinning him around, and with one green, scaly fist, Snake clubbed Cosmo into unconsciousness.

  FOURTEEN

  1880

  Scott and April walked along the brick lined sidewalk. He offered her his arm and she took it. Just another couple out for an evening stroll. Except as they passed other people, or a carriage went by, Scott could discretely reach into his jacket pocket for his tricorder, which wasn’t much bigger than a smart phone, and run a quick genetic scan.

  Ahead of them, they could hear the murmur of a small crowd. What sounded like a half dozen or so conversations all happening at once. They could also hear the sound of a piano playing a lively tune. At the end of the block, they saw a wooden sign hanging from a wall above a door. THE THREE LANTERNS. And below it, the single word, TAVERN.

  They walked over and found the doors still open despite the late hour. Fifteen or so patrons were still inside, despite the late hour. Some were standing at the bar, others were at a tables, chatting over mugs of beer. The bartender lounged about behind the bar.

  Scott produced his tricorder and was about to run genetic scans. It would take only ten seconds.

  “Any sign of the meta-gene yet?” April said.

  Before he could begin, April grabbed him by the shoulder to steady her while she stood on one foot and reached her free hand down to the other foot.

  “What’s wrong?” Scott said.

  “Just how did women walk in these shoes? My feet are killing me.”

  “Maybe we should find a place to rest a bit,” he said. “Maybe a bench. Though, I haven’t really seen any for a while.”

  “And this dress. It must be almost eighty degrees out here.”

  Scott still held his tricorder. He tapped the screen and looked at the readout. “Seventy-seven point four degrees.”

  “I can’t see how a woman survived the summer in a getup like this. Petticoats and slips and all.”

  “I suppose in this time, you just wear what you wear. You’re born to i, and become conditioned to it. Someday, when our own time has become the past, people might look at our clothes and wonder how anyone lived like we do.”

  “Fat lot of good that does me now.”

  “Maybe we can find a place to sit in an alleyway.” He glanced to a pair of buildings behind them. “It’s kind of dark in there. We could sit unobserved. Maybe we could find an old crate or something.”

  April’s gaze went to the open doors, and the barroom inside.

  “You know what I could really go for?” her eyes were lighting up. “A table to sit at and maybe a cold glass of chardonnay.”

  Scott followed her gaze. “I don’t know if women went into bars, back then. Back now. You know what I mean.”

  “Well, what did women do? Just stay home and try to look pretty?”

  “You know, I guess I’m not really sure.”

  “To think, I’m going through all this pain with these shoes, and sweating my ass off in these clothes, and we’re not going to come out of this without some useable information.”

  “Well,” he shrugged, “I’ve taken a lot of genetic scans. We might have some data to work with once Sammy and run an analysis.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t want to look at graphs and charts. I wanted to come back here and find the answers. Figure out just what’s going on. Where’s the meta-gene coming from?”

  “Well, sometimes science takes a while. We need patience.”

  “I’m not in the mood for patience. Not in these shoes. My feet are going to be hurting for a week. I mean, look at them. I can’t even slip out of them. They lace up the front like work boots.”

  “We need to find a place for you to sit. Let’s check out that alley.”

  “Scott, think about it for a minute. The genesis gene. What would it take to create such a thing? An artificial gene?”

  “Well,” he shrugged, “more technology than there would be available in this time period.”

  “Come on, Scott. Think. If you and Jake and the rest of us were living in this time period and we wanted to create a gene. I mean, hypothetically. How would you do it? What equipment would you need? What kind of power source?”

  His face came alive with the idea. A new train of thought. They would need a power source. “That’s it. You’re as smart as you are beautiful.”

  She flashed him a tired smile. She appreciated it, but her feet hurt and she felt like she was in a sauna.

  He began tapping at the tricorder with one finger. “I’m going to scan for power sources. Nuclear. Ionic. Anything that should be out of place in this time period.”

  “Meanwhile,” she said, “while you do that, I’m going to go into that alley and find a place to sit.”

  She walked on her blistering feet toward the alley, and then raised one hand and engaged her meta ability enough to make her hand glow. Better than a flashlight. One of the aspects of her power that she had discovered how to use.

  Scott was behind her. “Careful. Don’t let anyone see you do that.”

  “No one here but maybe an alley cat. And he’ll keep our secret.”

  He found a stack of three crates. The building across the alley from the tavern housed a hardware store, and the crates had probably carried product to be sold. Probably arrived in a buckboard wagon pulled by a team of horses. Scott pulled on the top crate and found it empty, and hefted it down.

  With a bow and an overly gallant wave with one hand, he said, “My lady.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” April said, and sat, taking the weight off her feet. “Oh, God, this feels good.”

  He glanced at the small monitor on the tricorder. “Hey, look at that. It found an ionic power source and it seems to be nearby. I’m having a little trouble locating it exactly. Almost like someone was attempting to mask it.”

  “Why don’t you call Sammy and Jeff and tell them to get over here, and we can all use our tricorders to try and triangulate the location of the source?” She had crossed one leg and was trying to rub her ankle through the leather of the shoe.

  “You know, with four tricorders, we could triangulate..,” he looked at her, realizing she had just said what he was beginning to say.

  She gave him a pained smile. “I know. I’m smart and beautiful.”

  Sweat was running down her back under her dress. “Scott, you know what I could really use? I hate to be a pain, but I really need something cold to drink. Skip the chardonnay. I could just go for a tall glass of cold water”

  He nodded. “I’ll go into that tavern and see what I can find. You wait here.”

  “Oh, I won’t be going
anywhere. Not on these feet.”

  He hurried away, tucking his tricorder into his jacket.

  April sat and waited. Her feet didn’t throb quite so badly as long as she was off them. But she was going to sweat to death in these clothes.

  Then a thought occurred to her. It was dark in this alley, so she couldn’t be observed from the street. And the sidewalk seemed to be deserted, anyway. They had arrived from the future at ten o’clock and now it was close to midnight. Except for the guys in the tavern, she and Scott had the streets pretty much to themselves. By going quantum, she could shed these clothes in an instant. And her feet would be healed once she recoporealated. She could stand in the darkness wearing only her jumpsuit and cool off a little, then maybe Scott could help her back into the cumbersome petticoats.

  She stood, the newly forming blisters on her feet protesting, and she simply closed her eyes and with a quick flash of light, her clothes were suddenly empty and they collapsed to a heap in the gravel of the alleyway. She then reappeared in another flash of light, standing in her jumpsuit. The top was sleeveless, and the pantlegs dropped tightly to her ankles. She stood in bare feet, but the blisters that had been forming from her shoes were now gone.

  She raised her arms to the night air. Now that the heavy clothes were gone, the breeze drifting in from the harbor felt cool and was striking her as heavenly.

  April stood with her eyes shut, thinking she should start getting dressed, but wanted to wait in the breeze for just another minute.

  There was motion behind her, but she heard nothing. Then a small device the size of a cigarette lighter was pressed to her neck. Before she could even react, she found her consciousness falling away. Her knees buckled, and two arms caught her from behind.

  Scott looked in wonder at the interior of the tavern. It was like visiting a living history museum. He and April had visited Plimouth Plantation a couple years ago, and the feeling was kind of like this. Except at Plimouth, along with people in period costumes, there had been tourists milling about and asking questions. Here, there were no tourists. Except for maybe him.

  A couple men in dark coats and cravats were sitting at a table, each with a glass of brown liquid before him. Probably scotch. One man was balding wore a thick mustache that wound its way up along his cheeks to meet bushy sideburns. The other was a younger man, clean shaven and with an aquiline nose. He glanced about with his eyes half shut, as though he were looking down on the world about him. Old money, Scott thought, in a time period when, from what he had read, financial class differences meant much more than they did in his own time.

  Seven men were scattered about the bar, all in various versions of costumes you would only see in Scott’s time on the top of a wedding cake. Finely tailored jackets, shirt collars starched and reaching high on the neck and elaborate cravats. Some of the shirts had ruffles running up the front.

  The bartender was a man of maybe forty, with dark hair that was parted in the middle and slicked down. He wore a white shirt, a checkered vest, and a black tie. Arm garters decorated each bicep.

  “Yes sir,” he said. “Something I can get you, this fine evening?”

  Holy shit, Scott thought. I’m actually talking to a guy from 1880!

  But he said, “I hate to trouble you, but I need a glass of water for my lady, outside.”

  “No trouble at all, sir.” The bartender retrieved a tumbler from behind the bar and filled it from a pitcher. “No charge, of course. And my best to the lady.”

  “Thank you,” Scott said and turned to leave, his hard soled shoes tapping on the finely polished hardwood of the floor.

  As he stepped out into the night, it struck him that he had seen the bartender before. He and April had passed the man on the street earlier. The man had been walking with a woman.

  Scott turned into the alley. It was dark.

  “April?” he said.

  There was no response.

  He couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of his face because of the darkness in the alley. A lamp post in front of the tavern shed its pale, gas light onto the street, it didn’t reach this far into the alley. Yet, the alley felt empty. Scott pulled out the tricorder and clicked a button, turning the light of the monitor to full intensity, and he turned it to face outward. Sort of like people do with a cell phone.

  He saw April’s clothing lying in a crumpled heap in front of the crate she had been sitting on. The buttons were still buttoned, the clasps still clasped. This meant she had shed them by going quantum. And he didn’t think she would go quantum unless something bad had happened.

  He dimmed the light on the screen and then punched in a command for it to search for organic quantum energy. Since April was the only source of organic quantum energy he knew of, he figured it would find her quickly.

  And yet, it didn’t. It was though she hadn’t gone quantum, but had simply vanished. Or had somehow vanished after going quantum.

  He raised his left and and spoke into the wrist band he wore. The only piece of non-period clothing he wore.

  He said into it, “Sammy. Jeff.”

  An audio field formed around Scott and Sammy’s voice came from it. “Yes, Scott?”

  “We have an emergency. April has disappeared. How fast can you get here?”

  Jeff said, “Just give us a moment to locate your coordinates with our tricorder. Okay, I’ll have us there in..,”

  “...seconds,” he said, as he and Sammy were suddenly standing beside Scott. Sometimes when Jeff appeared or disappeared, there was a flash of light. Other times they simply seemed to step out of empty air.

  Scott quickly filled them in on everything, including the ionic power source he had detected.

  “You think they’re connected?” Jeff said. “The power source and April’s disappearance?”

  Sammy said, “There’s no actual evidence to support the theory that they are connected. To jump to conclusions might be dangerous, should we guess wrong.”

  “Scott, you’re in charge here. What’s your gut tell you?”

  Scott gave Jeff a long look. Not that he could really see him in the darkness, but his eyes were adjusting a bit and he could see Jeff’s outline.

  Scott said, “My gut tells me they’re related.”

  “Mine too.”

  “All right. Let’s spread out a little and use our tricorders to get a fix on the location of that power source."

  FIFTEEN

  2034

  Once they reached the roof of the old airport, Jeff was fully powered-down. He said, “Quentin, reach into my mind and see the idea I have and broadcast it to the others. It’ll save time.”

  The Darkness said to Quentin, “I will open my mind to you.”

  There had been a time when Quentin’s attempts to touch the Darkness’s mind turned up nothing. As though the Darkness were not even there. Over the years, however, Quentin had learned the Darkness had the ability to somehow block him. Quentin lost little sleep over wondering about this. No one knew the nature of the Darkness’s power. How it worked. Not even the Darkness seemed to know. With Scott dead and no diagnostic equipment for Sammy to work with, Quentin doubted if they would ever know.

  Quentin reached with his mind toward all of them and made the connection, creating a circuit. He read the idea in Jeff’s mind and sent it to the others.

  Sammy, of course, couldn’t receive Quentin’s telepathic input, but he knew the only time Jeff would power-down in a battle situation would be if he was going to use his time-travel ability.

  He said to Jeff, “I have known you so long I think I can anticipate your idea.”

  Jeff then said, “I’ll be back. With company. Get ready to deal with them.”

  And he was gone with a flash of light.

  Quentin, however, was staring at the Darkness. This was not the first time Quentin had ever accessed his mind, but every time he was struck with the same thought.

  Quentin said, “You’re really not quite human, are you?”
r />   “I was once. Long ago. But now is not the time for this discussion. We have to ready ourselves. Jeff will be back soon, possibly within seconds, and the battle will begin.”

  The Enemy was setting up a series of what looked like giant satellite dishes along a perimeter ten miles outside the city. This was how they would generate their nullifier field. With this, they could nullify most meta abilities. However, they could not stop tachyon energy. Jeff wasn’t surprised. Even the aliens didn’t have the technology necessary to stop time. Jeff didn’t know if it was even possible. They could detect tachyon energy, but couldn’t stop it. After all, how could you stop time? Of course, zeta energy could disrupt tachyon energy and Jeff knew little of the science behind it, but at the moment he didn’t really care. All knew was he had not only lost Sara, he had never really had her. And these mechanized bastards were going to pay.

  The Enemy was five hundred strong, all of them standard robot drones, dressed in desert camouflage. Each had an ion pistol holstered to one side and an ion rifle slung over the back. Each wore a helmet, but no attempt was made to even make the face appear remotely human. Two large cameras that served as eyes, and a speaker immediately below them.

  Jeff appeared among them, and within ten feet of a portable control panel that had been set up. It was on a steel table, and was essentially a large, touch-control digital monitor. It was how they would control the nullifier field locally.

  There was a delayed reaction as the drones took a moment to realize he was present. Then the screen lit up with a long line of binary code and a recorded voice began saying over a speaker, “Warning. Tachyon energy field detected.”

  But it was too late. Jeff was already here. The robot drones turned to face him. The one nearest him was drawing its ion pistol.

  Jeff charged at him, grabbing the pistol, then effectively pushed the android through the strands of time, but hung onto the pistol as he did so. He had said once the strands of time can rip you to shreds if you aren’t careful, and this was what happened to the android. It came apart in front of Jeff, its various pieces being sucked away through time, and he was left holding the ion pistol.