He just had to remember to take a piece of the time machine with him. To ensure even if someone did divine how to put it back together, they couldn’t do anything with it. A keepsake, maybe. And a new hobby?
***
Gertrude went to slide out a box of chocolates from under the bottom shelf and instead came out with a book. It was entitled Probabilistic Universes. Intrigued by the title, and what possible connection it had to Cicero, she flipped the pages.
She began to tremble.
According to this author, we simultaneously exist in any and all possible universes. What caused us to repeatedly open our eyes in the same reality had more to do with habituation than with necessity. Habituation informed by genetics and culture which seduced the brainwaves (as determined by an underlying biophysics that was indeed far more supple) to collapse in a prescribed manner. Remove the conditioning, unlearn the habits and—presto—access to any and all alternate universes.
She flipped to the end of the book to get to the punch line.
By this author’s thinking, the quickest route to freedom was to construct a device that changed the channel for you, collapsing the brainwave out of any and all universes at once into the desired universe.
He said nothing of how this could be done, being a theoretical physicist, and not an experimental one.
When Cicero came through the front door of the chocolate shop, he announced his arrival with the tinkling of the bell hanging on the door. She didn’t waste any time confronting him; she shoved the book in his face. “What are you up to, Cicero?”
He grabbed the book out of her hand, stared at the title, turned the book over, then handed it back to her. “Never saw it before. What the hell are probabilistic universes?”
What shook Gertrude to the core was the feeling he wasn’t lying. Whatever Cicero was up to, it was sufficiently traumatic for him to repress it from memory. Even denial would have been visible on his face, if only for a split second. This was the kind of divorce from memory only possible through splitting off a part of himself into a whole new personality, one who might be aware of Cicero, but of whom Cicero was not aware. The existence of such split personalities was speculative at best, but certainly no more so than the physics contained in the book in her hand.
Gertrude noticed the tail end of some device sticking out of the saddlebag on his bike. A sign he’d met up with his target? She thought of forcing the issue, but then hesitated. What if she forced the alter to the surface, only to find he was only too happy to cover his tracks by erasing her?
“I think I’ve divined a new chocolate recipe that should catch your fancy,” she said.
“You have?”
She decided she really was overreacting, which helped her better slip into character. For all she knew, this tough alter ego was the flip side of the gentle lamb that was Cicero, and he was just necessary for embarking on his crusades, which, if she knew more about, she’d support. And beyond that, nothing sinister was to be inferred.
THIRTY-FOUR
T-Rex parted the curtain over the window in order to regard Gretchen’s trailer. He could see her fussing about in the kitchen, as strange a mix of the traditional and the transcendent as ever. “You were never one for causes, but I could see how the men in black could drive you to this. They rob life of its sweetness, don’t they?”
He wondered how much of their life together in World War II ravaged Italy she remembered, back when he went by Thomas and Cicero, the latter, the name of his alter. He’d never met anyone who could remember past lives before; if he wasn’t careful, she could be a real threat to his mission. This might very well be the first time in history an immortal had been threatened by a mortal.
She had known him around the time he dispatched Time Machine Guy, one of many. That’s right, Able was his name. Able Gantry. Able was not too unlike Rave, who he had had to dispatch for his contributions to the new Renaissance; namely, another time machine. Was Rave a reincarnation of Able? The thought would never have occurred to him before today. Could souls be so determined to leave their marks on the world that not fulfilling their life missions led to a form of OCD across lifetimes?
***
Mort found he excelled in the role of real-estate broker. “As you can see, it’s a bathroom fit for a queen. It pipes music straight into the shower.”
“My wife’s hard of hearing,” said Felix, the old geezer sizing up the Airstream for future accommodations.
“Perhaps she would enjoy the shower’s many massaging jet streams, then. They say as we lose a sense, the others amplify to compensate.”
“I know she screams every time I put my hands on her,” Felix said.
Mort watched Felix open every cupboard. He stepped inside the latest one, noticed how it hemmed him in perfectly. “Verna, honey. I think we can subtract the cost of a couple coffins if we go with the Airstream.”
Verna reminded him, “We had the construction workers come and bury us alive already, honey. Piling a mound of earth over our heads saves on heating and cooling.” The febrile old witch rattled her bones with her unsteady gait as if she was getting ready to cast them on the floor to do a reading of the runes. Mort’s first customers of the day were turning out to be a real pair.
Mort eyed the crew outside futzing with the components of the time machine, the makeshift workbench thrown together with a free sheet of 4’ x 8’ plywood and a couple of hobby horses—both appropriated from Hartley, the fix-it type neighbor. Hartley showed a little too much curiosity in their time machine project for his tastes. Retired coot couldn’t wait to roll up his sleeves and build something noteworthy, just their luck. He scrutinized their every move to see if he could possibly lend a hand. Mort was glad they’d emptied the trailer prior to showing it, in any case. It helped him showcase its virtues, versus how cramped it actually was.
“I don’t know,” Verna said. “He’s half blind these days. Took him three years to learn his way about our current trailer. Now that he’s so forgetful, he still only finds his way to his destinations half the time. I guess what I’m saying is, we really don’t need any more adventure in our lives right now. Each day we wake up, it’s like getting thrown into a movie. We nearly drowned yesterday when the faucet froze up and neither of us had the strength to turn it off.”
Mort sighed. “I understand.” Maybe it was just the extra oxygen reaching his brain… “Of course, less space to move about in means less chance of getting lost, too. Less wear and tear on your joints, Verna. Hell, you can use the walls as handrails if you lose your balance, they’re close enough together.” He couldn’t believe he was now passing off the trailer’s vices as virtues. Or that he was putting his need for expedience over and above what little happiness the old-timers could squeeze out of their few remaining years.
“We’ll think about it,” Verna said. She grabbed hold of Felix, and tied him to her, like a pair of mountain climbers concerned about their perilous descent down the steps of the Airstream to the valley with the river below. One good fart from the old witch, and she’d be dragging dead weight at the end of the line. Mort sighed, watching them out the window as they departed. It was exhausting putting this much energy into a sale and having nothing to show for it.
***
From the window of his trailer, T-Rex spied the group working on their time machine on the makeshift worktable. Acorns dropped on their machine parts as the breeze blew in tufts and squirrels jumped among the treebranches overhead. They seemed to be so at peace and at one with what they were doing, even God’s creatures, so easily rattled, weren’t put off by them. T-Rex felt a pang of longing ripple through him.
It was time to venture into their world. After taking such calculated pains to be here ahead of them, it was time for some impromptu.
How could Mort know of his penchant for tight quarters, making the idea of a mobile home hideaway not such a stretch, unless he remembered his past life aboard an aircraft carrier? How could Santini recall the fondness for r
oadtrips that continued to pull at him even now if he couldn’t recall his stint in MonstroCity with Greta, Gretchen’s alter ego from another life, and another timeline? This and so many more factoids about the group available to T-Rex they were not themselves privy to, made the mental calculus that allowed him to arrive at this destination ahead of them rather straightforward.
***
Casserole Guy stuck his head in the door of the Airstream. “Come right on in!” Mort said. “We’re delighted to have you.”
Casserole Guy strutted up the steps like a mountain goat, quite the contrast with the last set of would-be tenants.
“Can’t tell you how much I appreciate a younger customer,” Mort said. “Hard to convince these old timers to get with the times. I emphasize every modern amenity, and the thought of change just sends them running.”
Casserole Guy laughed. “You think they’re stuck in the past, you should get a load of my place.” He ran his hands along the smooth, streamlined finishes.
“Who says it shouldn’t be style over function?” Mort gestured overhead. “And the HD TV is insurance against another pair of glasses. Why pay the optometrist more when you can just sharpen the picture of the world around you?”
“You have a real talent for sales, sir.”
“Yeah, where do you think that comes from?” Mort took a second to ponder the mystery. “Never sold a damn thing in my life.”
“If it’s a talent surfacing out of the blue, fully formed, I’d say could be a past life skill mastered you brought into this life with you because it has some bearing on whatever unfinished business you need to attend to.”
“Aren’t you and Sister Gretchen the pair? She’s always going on about that past life stuff. Well, back to business… As you’ll notice, plenty of light. Hard to stay depressed with this much sunlight streaming in the windows. People don’t think of that when they pull up to a hitch in a trailer home park, but these can be pretty depressing places. Helps to have your countermeasures in place from the get go.”
Casserole Guy laughed. “Relax. I came over here to put you out of your misery. I’ll swap you my place for yours while you’re here. You can have this back anytime.”
“Really? I’d hate to think you’re taking pity on me, though I clearly deserve it.”
“Hi, I’m Thomas Rex, T-Rex for short,” Casserole Guy said, extending his hand.
“A fellow Neanderthal, I feel like we’re bonding already,” Mort said. T-Rex laughed. All in all, a very accommodating fella. “Well, it’s a deal then.” Mort clamped down on T-Rex’s hand and pumped it as if he were drilling for oil in a long-depleted Texas oil field.
“You don’t mind if I take a look at your place first, do ya?” Mort asked. “Hate to sound mercenary, but practical considerations are my department, too. A real troupe of airheads, my compatriots are.”
“I insist on it. Hope you’re a history buff.”
“It’s definitely made an impression on me lately,” Mort said.
They shuffled across the patch of hard dirt adorned with weedy grass and dandelion flowers—the latter, Mort remembered, was good for making wine—to arrive at T-Rex’s trailer.
“This’ll do nicely,” Mort said, getting a load of T-Rex’s double-wide. “Don’t suppose I can talk you into leaving the knick-knacks. Sister Gretchen will be tickled pink. I must admit I feel partial to them myself,” he said, holding up a Luger.
“My pleasure. Of late, others have been getting more use out of this memory palace than I.”
“So what brings you to this place?” Mort asked. “You seem a little lively to be letting yourself go to seed in cucaracha land.”
“Cucaracha land?”
Mort pointed to the ceiling and the sound of acorns falling. “Like living inside a cucaracha in a crazed flamenco-dancer’s hands the livelong day.”
T-Rex laughed. “I’m really starting to adore you. I can’t believe our paths never crossed before. What a treat to finally meet.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone ever said about my world-weariness.”
“I’ll just take my duffel bag, already packed,” T-Rex said, lifting it up, “and poof, this place is yours.”
“Ready to run on a dime. Who else do I know like that? Well, besides international spies, of course.”
T-Rex laughed, footed it to the door. “You never did say what brings you to these parts,” Mort said. A signal from his inborn detective’s radar flashed Danger.
“Just needed some time away,” T-Rex said. Mort couldn’t avoid noticing the self-conscious way in which he uttered that phrase. Deliberate double entendre? If so, over what? Oh yes, the time machine they were building would definitely afford time away.
***
Mort noticed he was still holding the Luger in his hand. He’d been waving it at T-Rex the whole time they were talking. And the man hadn’t batted an eye. Wasn’t that interesting? He checked the gun; it was well oiled, loaded, and ready for action. Who doesn’t flinch before a loaded gun?
Try as he might, Mort couldn’t seem to put the gun down. As soon as he set it back on its resting place, he picked it back up again, turned it over in his hand, pretended to fire shots by shutting one eye and squinting to line up the front and rear sights of the gun with his imaginary target, hand outstretched.
Finally, unable to calm himself from his agitated state, he sat down, intent on doing one of Sister Gretchen’s exercises. He relaxed his mind and drifted back to that period in time when this gun might have meant something to him.
He saw himself standing in a window on lookout as a woman, a rather fetching woman, holding a Luger. She was standing guard over someone in the background.
***
“Come away from the window, sister. You’ll give the Germans the impression we have something to hide.”
She snorted, dialed up the aperture in her eyes almost willfully to better take in the figures lurking in the shadows below.
The doorbell buzzed. The electricity shot through her as if she were the grounding circuit.
She begrudgingly surrendered the window, and pressed the button by the door. “Who is it?” she said in a smoky voice recalling late-night jazz clubs, clinking ice, and piano players riffing off cue.
“You ordered a box of chocolates,” the young man’s voice said.
She buzzed him up. “You and your sweet tooth. That stuff’ll kill you.” Having recognized the voice of the kid she’d ordered the chocolates from, a harmless soul, the kind one didn’t see anymore, she returned to the window.
“This thing is so ahead of its time,” Jeremy Bright said, stroking his own ego. “Einstein, phooey. Let him defect to America. Who needs him?”
“What is it about wars that bring the future crashing down on our heads?”
“Desperation, and a little inspiration,” he said, making an adjustment to his device. “Quite the explosive mix.”
“I passed a Romani woman today who says she sees spaceships every day, zinging over the city. Her Romani friends tell her they’re over Berlin, as well. From the variety of ships, she doesn’t think it’s just one alien civilization. We’re suddenly the garden spot for the entire universe.”
“Makes sense if they have a vested interest in us surviving our own coming-of-age story.”
She seated herself on the window sill, lit a cigarette. “Half the kitchen appliances you see in the store look like spaceships from another world. It’s as if our interstellar friends are using the artitsts’ minds as radio receivers to broadcast concern and camaraderie.”
“I bet they’ve been here for every major turning point in human history.” He winced as he tightened down with the crescent. “Benefactors from afar, waiting zealously for when we’ve grown up enough to join the federation of worlds. Today, with my help, we certainly make a big stride in the right direction.” He hoisted the weapon with effort.
There was a knock at the door. Jeremy set the weapon on the table and threw the tablecloth over it.
“Subtle,” Camellia said.
She got the door, retrieved the box of chocolates, and threw the kid a five dollar bill. “Let yourself out,” she said, and sauntered back to the window. She allowed him to get an eyeful, her figure accentuated by the coke bottle dress, the thick black waist band, the stiletto heels. The latter she wore in case the bullets ran out. Easier and subtler than carrying a pair of daggers strapped to her waist, though not by much. If she didn’t give him an eyeful he’d find a reason to hang around. If she made it clear she had eyes only for that window, he would join the rest of the posse trailing her for reasons that had nothing to do with her brother. She’d rather be thought of as the flirt, winking at her distant admirers, than the bodyguard, which, in the words of her hapless brother, raised eyebrows in an even less desirable manner.
***
Thomas closed the door, intimating departure, as he slunk into the shadows, and drew his gun. Now was unquestionably the best time to take them both out, but he hesitated. Maybe it was the beautiful woman he had no desire to see dead; there had to be a better way to get her horizontal.
Maybe he wanted to see if the invention really worked before adding to his body count. He was starting to feel like a man looking to justify his lust for murder with increasingly obtuse rationalizations. Who in wartime exactly wasn’t inventing the future out of their basement, as a way of crawling out from under the rubble of a collapsed timeline? Inventions that promised to resurrect a future weren’t something he had the right to take away from anybody, himself most of all. He had his wife and kids to think about.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 113