by Ramy Vance
Buzz dismissed her. “Thank you, Emma.”
The robot went back into a corner and switched to power-saver mode, and everyone dug into their food as Carolyn and Marshall came back inside and joined them.
Rueben eyed his toast, which was cold by now. He’d been hesitant to try it. Buzz had once given them all a parasite cleanse he’d made in test tubes. It was so bad Rueben couldn’t ever forget, but he should have known it’d be disgusting judging by its unnatural neon color.
This toast, however, looked normal. The bread was a healthy burnt color, and the butter and jam looked natural. He took a tentative bite. “Hey, this is quite good.”
Aki nodded her agreement over a mouthful of hers.
Marshall took one bite of his hash browns, and his face lit up. He turned to Rueben. “You see, son, this is what hash browns are supposed to taste like.”
“Great. So now my cooking skills are backseat to a robot’s.”
Marshall whistled, and he spoon-fed Carolyn. They laughed together, and Rueben held back nausea. His parents were getting along quite well, it seemed. Marshall held a full fork up to Rueben. “Taste this, come on. Taste how good this is.”
Rueben cringed and pushed the fork away. “No thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”
Marshall passed the fork around the room. “You guys taste this. I mean, this is some good stuff. Buzz, where did she get this recipe?”
Emma spoke in a monotone. “Waffle House.”
Marshall snapped his fingers. “That is where it’s from.” He turned to Carolyn, who nibbled at her bagel. “Do you remember our third date? We went to the Waffle House.”
She dropped her bagel. “I do remember that. It was after the Poison concert.”
They all laughed, and Aki teased Marshall, “I wouldn’t take you for a Poison fan.”
He frowned. “You know, if the woman you love—well, to hell with you fuckers. What would any of you know about love?”
Rueben countered, “That every rose has its thorn, that’s for sure.”
Marshall rolled his eyes at Rueben, and they all laughed. It felt so good.
Buzz cleared his throat. “Emma is a prototype cook robot. She comes preprogrammed with recipes, but she gets smarter over time. She’ll pick up restaurants you like from your phone and scan their menus to find suggested menu items, and if available, the recipe itself.”
Marshall stared wide-eyed at Emma. “She picked up that I go to Waffle House from my phone?”
“If I looked into her programming and data usage history, I would likely find that’s what she did.”
Marshall protectively clasped his phone. “What else does she pick up?”
“Just food preferences for now. She’s not some type of spy surveillance device. Um, now let’s get back to business. We have to figure out what to do about Rueben-Z if he shows up. And also the time disease phenomenon that he most likely brought to this world. We’re probably going to need a plan for that.”
They all agreed. After they finished eating, of course.
Chapter Ten
Wednesday, May 24, 11:11 a.m.
Buzz led everyone into a conference room with a white dry-erase board at the front and waited for everyone to take their seats. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we? Emma, a round of drinks for everyone.”
Martha held up a hand. “How about we make that water instead of booze?”
“What?” Buzz said, but everyone else agreed with Martha.
After ordering a beer, Buzz began. “I think first we ought to rewind to the mansion. While I am still grieving over its destruction…the loss wasn’t total.”
“We all saw it explode when we were on the jet-copter,” Martha said. “It was dark outside, but I’m pretty sure that was a total loss.”
Buzz sighed. “What I mean to say is I’m not totally without computer resources. Basically, I backed up all my data to the cloud. However, I am short of some computing power here in this place.”
Marshall spoke up. “Are you saying the Internet might be a bit slow here?” Buzz nodded. “Then why didn’t you just say that?”
Before Buzz could respond, Rueben said, “Do you know if Rueben-Z made it out of the blast?”
“Ah yes.” Buzz tapped his fingertips on the desk in front of him. “I managed to pull up security footage from the mansion right before it exploded. Rueben-Z did make it out beforehand. As for now, he’s in the wind. With him still being alive, that means the time virus threat is still very real.”
“What about those two lumberjack robots?” Aki added. “Do you think they made it out as well?”
Buzz laughed. “Those two ‘lumberjack robots’ are most certainly dead. They’re so dumb they were probably still bashing up my server room when the explosion went off. Now, moving on—”
Martha raised her hand. “Wait, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“I understand why someone like you would build sexbots—I mean robots—like Binnie. Why’d you ever make lumberjack-themed robots? There something you want to tell us?”
Buzz’s face flushed. “That’s not relevant—”
“Inquiring minds want to know.” Martha smirked.
“I was curious about that myself,” Aki said.
“Fine. Fine. If you must know, I went through a stage in my childhood when I wanted to grow up and be strong like a lumberjack someday, okay? Jeez. Gimme a break. I was, like, twelve when I designed their schematics. Now, can we please move on to the important stuff?”
They discussed everything they knew about Rueben-Z and listened as Carolyn made a list and recounted what she and Rueben-Z had tried to stop the virus on the other worlds. Eventually, they all grew restless.
Everyone was thinking the same thing, but Marshall said it first. “I need a break.”
Everyone agreed except for Buzz. He disappeared into a triumvirate of laptop screens. Marshall turned to Martha. “Billiards? I spotted that on the map.”
She laughed. “Not unless you want your ass kicked like the last time we played a few years back.”
“Well, I’m a gentleman. I didn’t want to embarrass a lady.”
“Is that right? So you threw the game against a younger, rookie officer?”
“When you put it that way, it’s game on.”
They both smirked and slipped off into an adjacent room.
Rueben watched them leave, and Aki rolled her eyes. “They sure get along like a father and a daughter. Just watching them, I kind of feel left out.”
Rueben was glad that Martha was there to help keep Marshall in line although Carolyn seemed to be doing a good job of that as well now. He sighed and turned to Aki. “You know what I’d love to do once this is all over?”
“What?”
“I’d like to take you out, properly. You know, like to a restaurant or Shakespeare in the Park, like what normal couples do. And have normal conversations that don’t involve ‘resetting’ or psychotic villains.”
She smiled and played with his hair. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much although fighting Rueben-Z and his minions at the mansion alongside you was pretty good too. All the adrenaline and danger and all that.”
He looked into her deep brown eyes, and his heart raced. He felt like he could sit there all night with her, staring into her eyes.
She told him, “I have an idea.”
“Oh yeah?”
She toyed with his hand and brought it to her lips. “Let’s go to the hot spring.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The hot spring?”
“Yeah. We can be like a normal couple and pretend we’re on vacation.”
“Instead of in an underground lair plotting how to stop a parallel future version of myself from inadvertently destroying the world with a time virus?”
“Yeah, all that.” She whispered hotly into his ear, “Let’s just be you and me.”
He smiled at the idea, then rose and followed Aki down a long, narrow hallway, going deeper i
nto the earth. They arrived at a metal door, and she opened it.
Overpowering humidity and the sound of rushing water immediately greeted them. Rueben’s mouth dropped. It was a real mountain cave with walls an aged yellow and orange color. About ten feet up, a wide waterfall cascaded down into the cave and circulated in and out of a small pool. Steam rose from the water in a fine mist.
Aki winked at him and stepped into the pool one shapely, sexy foot at a time. “You coming?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Uh, yeah.” In a flash, he slipped off his shirt and jeans and got down to his black boxers. “How hot is it?”
“Not too bad. It feels like a hot tub, really.”
She waded in, waist-deep now, and he followed her. She was right. It felt like a sauna. He watched as she leaned back and wet her hair, marveling at how it fell in short, wet strands around her face. The steam rose around her, and it looked like the fog in a hot beach ad.
He couldn’t believe he was in this scene. Usually, the guys in the ads were finely chiseled, with rock-hard abs and striking smiles, or eyes that looked unnaturally blue. He was an average guy. He was skinny and lanky overall, and he didn’t have that surging confidence to knock a woman off her feet. He was always too worried about saying the wrong thing to ever really say the right one and usually erred on the side of caution by not offending them.
Maybe he had always been too cautious. Perhaps he should risk more. Maybe he should be that guy in the Calvin Klein ad. What would that guy do? With slow, dramatic arm strokes, Rueben swam up behind her. Then he kissed the back of her shoulders. To his shock, she let him. He grabbed her and pulled her toward him, kissing the back of her neck the whole time. She leaned into his kisses.
“Hey you two, get a room!”
They both started at Buzz’s voice. He came out in his swim shorts, holding a cocktail. Rueben softly groaned and released Aki, and Buzz entered the pool. “I think we’re all a little overworked. Some relaxation in this hot spring would be good for us all.”
Aki swam to the side of the pool and glanced upward. “You know what you should invent, Buzz? A massage therapist robot.”
He made a face. “They never do what you want them to do.”
Rueben joined Aki against the side of the pool, and the three of them sat with the water up to their shoulders, enjoying the steam and warmth. Buzz sipped his drink.
“What’s on your mind, buddy?” Buzz asked.
Rueben tried to relax the tension in his shoulders and neck. “This time disease my mom told us about. I’m worried. About this Earth. The way it devastated all those other worlds…”
Aki laid her hand on his wrist. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got Buzz.”
Buzz did a half-bow. “Why, thank you.”
“Yeah,” Rueben said, “but he couldn’t stop the phenomenon on any of the other worlds. That’s what worries me so much. This isn’t some kind of physical opponent we can punch and kick and shoot. I kind of miss the days of Pout and Pete.”
Silence fell over the cavern as they all grappled with the idea of the time disease.
Martha entered the cave, wearing her robe. She’d wrapped her long, dark hair in a high bun and carried a beer. “Who died?”
Rueben sighed. “The whole world if we don’t find a way to stop the time disease from taking hold on this Earth.”
Martha dipped her toes into the water. “Oh. That.” She opted to sit on the side of the hot spring beside them, with her feet dangling in the water. “I’m glad I’m finally using my vacation days. Use ’em or lose ’em, as the other cops say.” They all chuckled, but it was a nervous sound.
Carolyn showed up then, her outfit from the day before smudged and wrinkled. “Hi, guys. Mind if I join you?”
Buzz toasted Carolyn with his cocktail. “Be our guest.”
She sat beside everyone else and followed Martha’s lead by only putting her feet in.
Buzz included her in the conversation. “We’re trying to figure out how to stop the world from ending. You know, the usual.”
She didn’t respond. She just stared thoughtfully into the water.
Marshall was the last to arrive, holding a folding chair and a beer. “You’re all just hanging out with your dicks…and vaginas in your hands. We got Rueben-Z out there doing God knows what. Let’s work on this.”
Buzz greeted him. “Hey, Marshall. You weren’t here, so you know, nothing got done.”
They all laughed, and Marshall raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Sounds about right.”
He unfolded his chair and plopped down in it. Then, turning to the side, Marshall rested the lip of his beer bottle against the rocky ridges of the cave’s wall and popped off the cap with a well-placed smack of his palm. He smiled and took a long gulp.
Martha turned to Carolyn. “Anything else you can tell us? Something that might help us figure this out?”
Carolyn shook her head.
“Come on,” Martha pressed. “There’s got to be something.”
“This is your home and where all of you belong. You’ll do anything to save it. The other Earth was mine. I’ve never felt really at home since. Well, except for those ten years…”
Her words trailed off, and Rueben and Marshall caught her meaning. They both shifted uneasily.
Buzz snapped his fingers. “Carolyn, roughly how long were you and Rueben-Z on the other Earths before the time disease triggered?”
Carolyn dipped her hand into the hot water and watched the ripples. “It varied, really. A few days. A few months. We were on one world for over a year before…before it came and destroyed it.”
“Okay. But there has to be some kind of variable that triggered the phenomenon. Think, Carolyn, think.”
“I am thinking. I am…”
Rueben leaned forward. “Mom? What is it?”
“Maybe nothing. Rueben-Z…when we first started hopping to other Earths, we didn’t warp much once we arrived. We were trying to get a feel for life in a world parallel to ours. We kept to ourselves. Settled in a new city. Didn’t interact with the parallel versions of the people we had known on Earth-Z. People we had watched crumble to dust, helpless to do anything to stop it.”
Rueben couldn’t imagine the pain of watching his friends die that way right in front of him.
“Together, we sought out all the top physicists around the country. Although a few believed us, most just laughed at us. Each time either Rueben-Z or I would kill ourselves and warp back to before we had told them and seek out the next one. Deep down, we knew that that world’s Buzz was probably the only scientist with the ability to save Earth-Z.
“We reached out to Buzz, and he ran all kinds of tests and experiments on our warping abilities. He was able to view videos and information on all of Rueben-Z’s previous deaths and warps via the nanobot in his body that Buzz-Z had injected into him.”
Carolyn sighed. “It wasn’t long until one day the phenomenon struck, right there in Buzz’s lab. Buzz withered away right in front of us. Turned to dust. Horrified, we ran outside and saw that the grass around the mansion had already died and was continuing to die in an ever-expanding circle. Bugs, birds, rabbits, plants, people. All were in the phenomenon’s expanding radius. All turned to dust. Except us.”
Back in the hot spring room, everyone looked devastated, like they were going to be sick.
Carolyn continued. “There isn’t much more to say. We warped back to before Buzz had died. We told him what had happened. He ran some tests and died before us again in the same way. We warped back even farther the next time, and the phenomenon struck again—sooner this time. Eventually, we climbed back into the space and time capsule and hopped to another parallel world. To try to find a way to stop it.”
For a time, no one could find any words to say.
Then Buzz said, “I will add all this to my Rules for Repeaters. The time virus seems to go inactive when the infected Repeater hops to a parallel Earth. After a certain passage of time, th
e virus reactivates.” Buzz paused. “Warping may speed up the virus’s activation and cause it to go airborne and destroy the Earth eventually.” Buzz turned to Carolyn. “How long has Rueben-Z been on Earth-A?”
Rueben glanced at his friends. “Long enough for him to ingratiate himself with Pout.”
Buzz thumbed his chin. “So he’s been here at least a few months. And the time disease hasn’t struck yet. How many times has Rueben-Z warped backward on this Earth?”
“There’s no way to tell,” Carolyn said.
Aki’s eyes widened. “Now that he can’t warp anymore, maybe the time disease will stay dormant?”
Martha shook her head. “I doubt things will be that easy for us.”
Chapter Eleven
Wednesday, May 24, 3:04 p.m.
They all took turns showering after leaving the hot spring while Buzz returned to the conference room to review his notes.
Rueben was thinking about Buzz’s notes, trying to make heads or tails of them, when Aki came out of the shower with a towel wrapped turban-style around her head. “Your turn.”
Great. A shower would be a nice distraction. He was heading to the bathroom when Aki called to him. He turned with a quizzical look, and she handed him a shopping bag full of clothing. “Thought you might want these.”
He took the clothing. “Um, thanks?”
She laughed. “Rosa finally showed up. I guess clothes shopping for all of us took a long time.”
“I hope she didn’t shop at Old Navy.”
Aki laughed again. “I think I saw a Hawaiian shirt in there.”
He met Aki’s eyes. The way she looked at him, he wanted so badly to pick up where they had left off in the hot spring.
She looked away. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks for bringing the clothes.”
“No problem.”
She left, and he went into the bathroom to shower. He was in love with her—definitely more in love than he’d ever been with Rachel. Did she feel the same way about him? He turned on the water.