* * *
Hell? Hell is other people. Poking you with tridents. In a lake of fire.For eternity.
Also, the devil’s there.
Julian Offenhumper
A Remembrance of Tomorrow
Ѻ
Blood!
The worst kind of blood-my blood- bled redly from my head. B positive. But it was hard to do that right now.
I wiped it from my brow and straightened the front of my now marginally less resplendent tunic. A battered spitvalve from a trumpet fell down between my feet, tinkling a tiny tune of defeat in the empty hall. I frowned down at it as a crimson pool leaked out from it like a brass haemophiliac.I kicked it away and set my jaw, taking an inventory of myself.
My knuckles tingled inside my velour dress gloves. My knees and feet vibrated with the pent up aggression that would normally have been expelled by kicking some deserving chap in the face, neck or thorax. The edge of my hand thrummed with scarcely contained judo. The part of my head used for headbutting was trembling at the lack of butts it had dished out. My elbows were positively screaming at their lack of deployment in tactical bashings of late. My thumbs were livid, my shins protested, my armpits were outraged and the less said about the feeling of my shoulders the better.
You see, rather like an expensive sportcruiser or a big industrial mincing machine my body is like a highly tuned mechanism that requires a constant stream of fuel. A cruiser needs depleted francium rods or refined cow oil, a mincer needs fattened pig carcasses and I? I need a steady diet of righteous violence. Without it I stagnate, I rust, I get stale, I begin to falter and repeat myself, I rust and I get stale. Denied action, I begin to deteriorate, like a tractor left in the field of a farmer who has been abducted by a sexcult. It was a poignant image I had just thought of, but the thought of that tractor being pecked at by ravens, withered by the elements and clumsily piloted by a herd of cows made a wave of bile rise in me. And that was the last thing I needed, since my stomach was as miffed the rest of my fight-hungry body.
I had been denied a proper brawl. Tempus had outwitted me. Outwitting. Gah! It was the lowest form of victory. It was the avoidance of a good old fashioned punch-up, it was cowardice masked by cleverness wrapped in a guise of victory. Sure, I had outwitted many of my foes in the past; I’m an expert tactician as well as a renowned lover, but I had always at least had the decency to return to them after I had outwitted them and bash them in the chops until they were unconscious or crying. That is what we refer to as a ‘total victory’. But this Tempus character had weaseled his way out of even being within fisting distance of me; teleporting about and flinging a seemingly endless supply of instruments at me.
I still couldn’t quite understand where he was sourcing all of those. Funkworthy had intimated, in his stuttering way, that it had something to do with time travel and my own actions but that didn’t really make any sense to me. Still, he seemed to be very stressed about the mechanics of the fight, so I thought I would try to share my own insights, to ensure him that I was still at the top of my game.
“Ebenezer,” I whispered urgently, “I think he may be more dangerous than we thought. As well as time travel I believe he may have secreted about his person some manner of instrument replicator technology. Think about it! Where was he getting those instruments from?”
Funkworthy sighed again and started blabbering about time loops, causal sequences and the manipulation of cause and effect, but I had already begun to tune him out. He could be terribly long-winded about science matters and I was focussing my attention on working out where this new foe of mine would be stashing the replicator.
We walked out of the hall and I was glad of it. What should have been the site of celebration, cake-eatery and themed dancing was now marred.
We boarded the elevator and took the ride up to the observation deck in tense unbroken silence, save for my repeated shouted expletives. Above the floor of the hall was a series of walkways and platforms that intersected, giving a quiet place to take in the view outside the station windows. Through them the blackness hung like a huge drape and through that the stars glimmered coldly. I felt some measure of strength return to me then. The black was my home and the stars and planets were like rooms in my house. These were solid objects existing in the now, like a gourd or a table or Luxembourg. The fellow who awaited us didn’t live in the now. He didn’t even live in Luxembourg as far as I could tell. He was in the past, the future, he could be in all places at all times. I looked back at the calmness of the black and walked into the central command room that sat in the middle of the web of walkways like a big spider that was also a room.
He stood there, with his back to me (Tempus, not the spider, since the latter was just a simile..)
“Captain,” he said grandly, without turning, like an absolute dick, “you’ll forgive me if I’m diverted. I was just watching the fight we just had. Your buffoonery is even more amusing from this high vantage point. I speak morally and geographically, of course.”
I ignored him, partially because of a confusion over how what he had said about watching the fight, partially out of a confusion about how he had known to greet me without turning like that, partially out of a lingering confusion about where he had gotten all of those instruments, partly out of a confusion at the familiarity with which he addressed me but mostly because of a burning sense of futility, mixed with confusion. I was grudgingly realizing that, for the time being I’d have to play his game and that game was liable to be bas violent as it was stressful, like space monopoly or Buckaroo.
I looked around the room for clues or spare guns. It was a spartan well lit affair of the kind of sleek minimalism favored by intergalactic federations, Puff Daddies and upmarket phone retailers. The wall consoles blooped and bleeped a reassuring nonsense of science noises. The circular room’s transparent walls offered a look at the eerily deserted hall floor. The only things that were off about the setup was possibly the four sets of high tech-looking devices dotting the floor. A close inspection revealed them to be fashioned in roughly the same sartorially suspect way that Tempus’ trousers had, with their technological looking widgets whirring on them, the odious yellow piping down the hems and the crackling purplish energy modules. These diminutive ‘Time Y -fronts’ were crumpled on the floor haphazardly like the bedroom of a teenage Timelord but I suspected a more devious usage lay ahead for them than just room messery.
“What’s wrong?” Tempus said, finally turning to me, “No witty bon mot? No threat? No odious self aggrandizement? Or have you got a piccolo jammed in your ear still?”
“Joke’s on you, Tempus; I got that out a few minutes ago. I hear you, I’m simply wondering when you’ll get to the point. I’ve battled enough megalomaniacs, egomaniac and just plain vanilla maniacs to know when a deathtrap is about to be introduced to proceedings. Why don’t you get a damn move on? I’ve a party to get to, after all.”
Tempus smiled the patient smile of a man with a time machine strapped to his posterior. “That’s the swagger I know so well. Good. It wouldn’t be right if you came into this any different.” He patted himself down theatrically, as if searching for something, “Deathtraps. deathtraps, deathtraps… I have just the thing, since you asked. It should be along any second now-” He looked at his watch and then at a spot on the floor where, with annoying predictability an object flashed into existence with a crackling puff of time energy. I looked grimly at it as we three ignored my small fart. It was a cylindrical silver drum of a thing, about the height of a tall dog and the width of a rushed door, which carried with it an ominous humming sound and was covered with little red, blinking lights. You’d need to be blind, a fool or both not to recognize it as a bomb, and since I am not, am not and am not either, then it is (a bomb.)
“Oh god no,” gasped Funkworthy from my side, always the first to be knocked off of his stride by the materialization of bombs. I looked round at him, trying to judge whether I should be as alarmed as him or make fun of him for be
ing a coward.
Tempus smiled at my indecision and turned to Funkworthy, who was turning an alarming shade of pink (which was a bad sign for his species).
“Mister Funkworthy, you have a keen eye for the more...eccentric weapons of mass destruction. It seems that your Captain does not appreciate the threat. Favor him with an explanation. I went to a lot of hassle to secure this. The least it could do is terrify both of you equally.” He turned back to surveying the floor, grasping his hands behind his back, like an absolute dick would.
Funkworthy grabbed my elbow urgently, “Space, lord knows where this madman got this thing but that is, unmistakably a tachyon powered localized ACD device!”
“A tachyon powered localized ACD device?!” I cried. I looked from it to him,then from him to it. I shook my head, opened my mouth then closed it again. “You...You don’t say!”
Funkworthy eyed me with something approaching suspicion.
“Yes, you know; an advanced chrono-ton desynchronizer.”
“An advanced chrono desynchronizer?! Egads!” I said with fresh horror and more looking about.
“Yes- a device that disrupts and deteriorates the flow of temporal energy”
“A device that disrupts and deteriorates the flow of temporal energy?!”
“It’s commonly known as a temporal dispersement trigger.”
“Not a dispersement trigger!”
“Space, this device retards the flow of temporal energy.”
“Retards?!” I cried, looking around warily.
“Space- that’s a time bomb.”
“A time bomb?!”
“It’s a bomb!” he shouted finally.
I dropped my hands down and relaxed my shoulders immediately. “Well, you could have just said that to begin with, couldn’t you? Right, let’s do it the usual way. You grab a red wire, I’ll grab a green wire, then we can lift it up by those and drop it into a transporter set for the heart of a black hole.”
“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.”
“What’s wrong? Anti-tampering failsafes? different coloured wires? Forgot your screwdriver?”
“It’s got failsafes against movement and besides that, it’s a time bomb. Its circuitry protects itself by existing in a flux state. If you pull out an important wire the system detects it, travels back in time a few seconds and changes the layout of the wires. It’s an unbeatable failsafe. Nobody has ever defused one of these. Well, not that we know of. The worst part’s the detonation.”
“That’s usually the way with bombs,” I observed, eager to join in the technical side of the discussion.
“Quite. This thing doesn’t generate a usual explosion as we understand it. It destroys time itself in the area of its blast. If that thing went off right now we would be locked into this moment- this one now- forever. A time bomb detonation ruins the temporal state so much that for anyone caught in the blast that snatch of time is repeated over and over.”
“What?”
“Imagine time skipping like a stuck record, the same few seconds playing over and over.”
“Over and over?”
“Over and over.”
“Over and over?”
“Over and over.”
“Over and over?”
“Over and over.”
“Over and-”
“Captain, are you being ironic or are you really not getting this?”
I waved away his question. It sounded terrifying, even if Funkworthy still hadn’t made it clear how many times you repeat your actions over (and over). I looked back at the device and up to Tempus who was smiling intently at me. It sounded like hell- reality skipping forever like an over enthusiastic PE teacher; an eternity in a bubble of futile inaction. A chill ran through me at the prospect.
“Are you conscious inside the explosion?” I asked Funkworthy, “Do you know that you’re replaying the same moments?”
“The short answer is; nobody knows.”
“What’s the long answer?”
“Absolutely nobody knows. This device has only been detonated twice before that we know of. There are two such bubbles existing in the universe today, heavily quarantined of course. Years ago a team of scientists sent probes into the bubble, tried to take readings and pulled them out. The first probe came out recording nothing but the second was pulled out covered in rust, as if it had been floating in the recesses of space for aeons, its circuitry degraded down to its base elements. The third...well, by the time they dragged the third one out it had gone completely mad. Since then they’ve tried it all; flinging clocks in, firing photons at it, firing neutrinos at it, firing a big hose at it. The bubble is eternal- a fixed point of infinite repetition in the time/space continuum.”
We both looked over at the object now and, in tandem, took a respectful step backwards.
“I rather hope one does retain some consciousness” chipped in the perky voice of Tempus. “I like the idea that you’ll have a fragment of mind to ruminate on your failures.”
I moved my glower from the machine to Tempus. “So you’ve got your bomb. What now?”
“I told you- we’re going to re-live your past glories.Isn’t that what you wanted to do tonight? Be transported back in time as people tell you stories of your heroic deeds? I’m just making that literal. You play my little game or the bomb goes off.”
“What do I have to do?”
He pulled out a tablet from a pocket of his elaborate time trousers and flicked through it idly. “Your ridiculous story competition is helpful in one aspect- dates. Also two other things- Times and locations. And those are the only three things that I need.So- here’s the deathtrap you’re searching for- in order to stop the bomb you have four little challenges to go through.”
With a flick of a button on his top right buttock the four pairs of Y fronts stirred briefly before erupting with a purplish halo of shimmering sundial-scented energy that shot into the air five feet above themselves, quivered for a moment like a frightened jellyfish and then solidified slightly leaving four oval portals hanging in the air. As these hummed into life the bomb did likewise. Four crimson bulbs situated on the top of the device winked into life and sat there, throbbing silently like electric coldsores.
“Through my four little doors here are four little memory lanes. Each one will transport you back to an incident in your life. You step back into your body and you can relive one of your glories. Win the day and at the end of your allotted time you’re transported back here. The bomb will register your success and one light goes out. Do them all and all of the lights go out and the device turns off. Simple, Space, even for you.”
He gestured grandly at the portals, smiling in his mock ingratiating sneer. I took a second to weigh his offer in my head. I looked from the bomb to the pants, to the portal, to another set of pants, from those pants to the madman’s menacing trousers and back up to the face of their wearer.
My laughter, long and loud as it was didn’t seem to upset him as much as I hoped, so I did it nearer to his face and then threw in some rude gestures for good measure.
“That’s your plan?!” I bellowed in disbelief. “Walk me through some of my greatest victories and then...That’s it? Why I’d pay you for the service. That’s not a deathtrap, that’s a victory lap with a bomb in it.”
Ebenezer piped up as well, wagging a questioning finger at a still worryingly unperturbed Tempus. “That’s right. Space already survived those encounters. That’s why...well-” he gestured to my magnificent form, “so what’s to stop us from just walking out of here?”
“Go ahead,” he said simply and extended an open palm toward the door, “of course,” he finally added, “you’d miss all the little changes I made to that timeline. All the little surprises I sprinkled throughout your adventures.”
“Like what?”
He shook his head. “Now that really would be telling. Suffice it to say that I made a few little changes to the game board. Nothing too...permanent. Nothing like my litt
le friend here” he patted the blinking device. “But I observed in these testimonies a thing I had thought for a long time knowing you. You live a charmed life. Luck always seems to fall your way, the gun always has one last shot in it, the wind is always at your back. I just took those little things away. Four doors, Captian, one for each of your ‘pillars of personality’.”
“CALAPAW”
Tempus made a face at that, as though it were a ridiculous concept but nodded. He checked his watch again.
“Now, I’m sure Mister Funkworthy here briefed you on the nature of such changes to the universe when my first little buffer hit you. The universe takes a little time to catch up to any changes. Look out yonder.” He pointed out of the window and into the cold expanse of space, “Somewhere out there is the future I have set in motion rushing toward us. Fifteen minutes. It takes fifteen minutes for the universe to reset itself after a temporal change. If you don’t step through my first portal before then then, well...I win.”
He smiled ingratiatingly and exceedingly punchably.
He suddenly held up a finger as if forgetting something, “Oh, and I should remember. My little portals are, of course coded only to you, Space. Tonight’s about you after all .So-” He wagged a warning finger at Funkworthy, “no help from your little pet here. If my portals read his DNA crossing the border…” He patted the bomb affectionately and made a sound that probably resembled a time explosion but sounded closer to a rusty trumpet.
Tempus looked around the room happily. He pointed to the four portals, the bomb and out of the window to the time buffer as if reminding himself of everything.
“Aaaaaand that’s about it,” he clapped his hands together. “Have a lovely evening. Toodles,” he said cheerily giving a little salute and thumbed a control on his pants.
Funkworthy stepped toward him, “Wait, I have a question about-”
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 6