“I’m sure you do. Time travel’s all a little confusing, isn’t it? But I’m afraid I have to shoot off. Urgent business to attend to. Be seeing you!”
And with a cheerful wave Tempus once again let his hand fall down menacingly to his crotch in a movement I had learned to dread. He fingered a little knob there and made an opening to a place I could not understand. I dove toward him as I saw what he was about to do but his hands were already busy over his groin and I saw it was too late. He was too quick with his hands, that slippery snake, and before I could wrap my hands around him and beat him manfully into a stupor he had slipped out the back door (so to speak). In a blinding flash I was left prostrate on the floor with egg on my face and he was away.
I got to my feet and looked around. He was gone. He had set the rules of the game for me and tilted the board so much in his favour that the die, the little houses and all the fake money were in his lap. He had explained just enough for me to know just what manner of trap I was in and I knew he’d sooner drown himself in cat urine than give me any glimmer of hope through further elucidation. There was a changed universe speeding toward me and one I doubted would have see me serving as official bordello inspector. No, my death was rushing toward me, as surely as if the wave was made out of knives and hornets instead of time.
His portals still wavered from his diminutive little pant devices and the bomb still blinked ominously in the centre of the room.
Nowhere to go. No options left.
One door for me to enter. An open trap door and the universe itself closing in behind me.
I looked hopefully to Funkworthy, hoping to see the formation of a brilliant plan. He was furrowing his brows for all he was worth, and making a contemplative face with everything that wasn’t a brow.
I knew what had to be done. I’d figure out the intricacies of time and space along the way, probably.
“Well old friend, wish I wasn’t leaving you twiddling your thumbs here but duty calls-”
He still looked all confused and silent. I took a bold step toward the leftmost portal.
“I wouldn’t worry. Nothing to faze me but a bit of deja vu-”
No cunning plan seemed to be forthcoming.
“I’ll sort out all this time stuff. I think you underestimate my innate grasp of all this egghead stuff.”
He was gnawing his fist, looking intent.
I squared up to the portal. Something lay behind it and if today was any indication it would probably be a harpsichord upside my head.
“Once more into the breeches,” I said and poked my toes over the boundary. The time energy crackled around me and a static chill ran up my boot.I turned to Funkworthy, as I do before any possibly suicidal adventures.
“Remember me,” I said, “as an intrepid explorer. As a man who is not now and never was, confused by time travel.” My legacy secured, I turned back to the aperture and toed at it a little more.
Here goes nothing I thought and-
A firm arm grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me around. I wheeled away from the pants portal. It was Funkworthy, his face suddenly clear and urgent and ready to say the word ‘Space’.
“Space,” he said, “if you step into that thing you will erase yourself from history! But I have a plan- I need your trousers!”
Chapter Six
A Journey through Trousers, A Leap into Pants
* * *
Partings, my friend, are the sweetest sadness there is, for every goodbye brings with it the surety of a new hello, reinvigorated by the salutations that the departed would have begotten. The closing of a door can also jar open a window or refrigerator, if it’s windy. Every parted road produces a dual carriageway. Every river must splits in two to make an ox-bow lake.
And while parting is all we truly know of heaven, it is all I need of a haircut
Anton Rigolovic Popenphresh
Love in a Time of Collars
Ѻ
The elevator ascended Kronis station at the breakneck speed reserved for emergencies, attacks and sudden flatulence. I had no idea how many Gs we were doing but given that both myself and Space were pinned to the ceiling, faces flapping like scrotums in a wind-tunnel, it was probably too many. Below us, our ship once again receded down the lift shaft, ransacked of trousers.
I was struggling to hold on to Space’s golden tuxedo trousers as my kneecaps filled with my own saliva and my mouth filled up with the unguent pheromone liquid my people keep in their kneecaps for mating season. They were central to a plan I was still only formulating (the trousers, not my kneecaps (though they would be required too.))
“The trousers…?” Space queried, grunting out the words from his G-addled face.
“Essential. Limited time. Speak in broken sentences only. Remember. COAR Time ships. Plated with precious metal. Tune to time frequency. Trousers. Gold. Same thing.”
Instead of wasting time with questions he simply made an angry quizzical face. My lord, you could say what you want about the man but he was dashed good in a crisis; the economy of words, the reliance on barked commands, the sheer amount of things he could hit or set fire to. It truly was his home.
In our frantic journey from the control room, down to the ship, quickly to the lavatory, back out of the ship, back onto the ship (since I had left the keys in the ignition), back out of the ship and onto the lift I had eschewed explanation for frantic monosyllables- things like ‘Now!’ or ‘Hurry!’. Terribly motivating but not so informative. I tried to squeeze some explanation into a short time. I had planned to say at some point ‘time is of the essence’ but the opportunity hadn’t come up yet and we had been doing a lot of sprinting. Still, I think it is a relatively clever line in the circumstances and I didn’t want to waste it.
“Tempus game. Trap. Use Trousers. Track him,” I grunted as I eyed the blurring light that was our floor indicator, which was too quickly reaching the top.
The elevator reached its destination with a cheery ‘ding’ noise as the sudden application of the brakes to the lift fired us into the floor like two hams on a trampoline. The trousers which I had been cradling suddenly shot onto the top of my head and wedged there. I became intimately acquainted with the inside of the the welded door at the crotch, so I let out a cry that I suspect would have sounded out of the left trouser leg like a rusty trumpet, but gravity did its usual thing, depositing the trousers down on the floor of the lift. It landed on its legs, with me poking up out of the waistband, upside down, all flailing legs and desperately held breath. But before I had time to right myself or slither out of Space’s trouser leg I felt the haute couture trap be lifted and carried away. I heard Space bellow down into the waistband.
“How can you be sure it’s a trap?” he cried, his trousers making his shout a cacophony in the echo chamber of his brass fundament.
“Think about it!” I entreated kicking my shins about in futility. “The station, the bomb, the portals in the one room, the time limit; it’s all designed to keep you in one place, for a certain time. Why? He’s a time traveller. He could have killed you in the cradle if he wanted to!” The sprinting journey and Space’s less than careful carrying technique made my explanation and thoughts less than easy.
Space angled his face down the waistband. “Cradle?! Pah! You should know, Funkworthy, I was born on the battlefield! War was my nursemaid, my bottle was made of bayonets, my cradle was a crater blasted by a missile which was also my first mobile. My milk was-”
“Be that as it may,” I interrupted, “the point stands. He’s trapping you in this place. ‘Play my game or a bomb goes off’. The only explanation is that he’s attempting to alter your timeline elsewhere. He’s doing something somewhere-somewhen- else and he needs you out of the picture for that.”
For a sprinting second as I bobbed, inverted in my Captain’s rented trousers, I knew that he was weighing my words carefully.
“He seems pretty damned sure of himself so far!” Space said, dubiously.
It was true. But a hunch told
me that too this was part of the game. I was talking my theory as it came to me, sprinting to keep up with my train of thought, hitched to the runaway rocket of ideas, ensnared in the rigging of a conceptual hot air balloon that was threatening to float up into the stratosphere. Keeping track of the ideas, and thinking of vehicle metaphors was much harder while being worked out of a pair of trousers by your commanding officer and frankly, I suspected that some of my knee fluid was draining into my head.
“He WAS confident,” I yelled, my mouth to a sleeve, “in this station, where he’s worked on this time sequence and has been doing so for days. But he’s trying something risky right now in the place or time he’s just gone to. Think about it: where did he go to? He could just stick about and watch you play in his maze. Isn't that what deathtraps are all about? No, he’s off to do something-something he could foul up and if he fouls up he knows a time buffer would alert COAR or the Golden Fleet and maybe even you to his actions. So he’s tying you up with this game to keep you off his scent as he does god knows what. Misdirection.”
I sat there, impotently jiggling in his trousers as Space ran. If I was out of it I was confident I’d be looking at the dubious mix of confusion, alarm and self deception that was Space’s face as he was trying to process a new idea while simultaneously convincing himself that it was his.
With a clanging thump that reverberated through my cranium the trousers were set down and a firm hand fished me out of my tasteless prison by my ankle.
Space’s face swam before me, ecstatic with revelation. “I’ve got it! What Tempus is doing is this; he sets up his four pants game here for me so he can do something even more dastardly. That way if he makes a mistake and has to retry or relocate then I can’t be alerted by one of the time buffers- those wave things that so perplexed you earlier. Why can’t I be alerted? Because I’m here, trapped in this diabolical game!”
“You’re a genius, sir. Where do you get your ideas?” I sighed with little enthusiasm as he set me down on my feet. We were back in the bomb room.
“No time to get into that, Ebenezer. But now that I’ve gotten to the bottom of this, the least you could do is contribute something. You mentioned something about tracking that bugger down.”
“That I did.”
Time to get to work. I jimmied some non essential chronotron wiring off of the surface of the bomb case and some of Tempus’ underpants. The design and layout of the pants were a more diminutive version of those I had observed on Tempus’ trousers. I had had a lot of opportunities to look at the design and operation of his machine during the time that Space was hitting himself with cellos. I had studied it keenly and presently I was in a room with four of Tempus’ portals to work from. This gave me hope of recreating it or some crude facsimile. As I had pointed out to Space precious metals were a reliable catalyst and conductor of time energy. Something about more precious metal opened up the fabric of time. Many papers had theorised why exactly this was but the prevailing theory was- dispiritingly- that the universe was simply just as shallow as its inhabitants.
Working, with the speed and dedication of a simple sweatshop foreman I soldered the purloined time apparatus onto Space’s trousers in a crude approximation of Tempus’ design. I assured myself that it needn’t be too accurate, that it only needed to amplify the energy trail that was already there, but I knew in my heart that a miscalculation could mean flooding this small room with gallons of unused time. In seconds I knew I could fill this room with half-birthed months and defective weekends which would rip apart our bodies, transform us into babies and leave our withered ancient cadavers to be found years down the line. It was a chilling thought to be confused by. I swatted it away and kept on soldering. Within few scant minutes I had a basic time detection circuit inlaid to the rump and crotch of Space’s trousers. The natural time sensitive vibrations of the metal would have to do the rest. It wasn’t pretty but as far as time machines welded onto trousers went, it’d just damn well have to do.
“What about the bomb?” Space asked, tensing his punching arm and eyeing it dangerously.
I shook my head sadly. “Seems to be the real deal, sir. It seems like Tempus’ distraction is as deadly as his main ploy. Maybe even deadlier. Maybe both!”
“...Or all three,” Space mused, his brow furrowed in worry.
“Quite.”
“So we have before us a two pronged fork of a problem; on one hand, one of us needs to don that handsome piece of time equipment and tear after Tempus down whatever time hole he’s currently making and the other has to stay and deal with these modified deathtraps from our own history to save this piece of space being turned into the temporal equivalent of an exploded trifle, technically speaking."
We both knew that the time buffer was approaching us. As if summoned into being by my thought the station’s own warning system piped up.
"UNKNOWN ENERGY SURGE DETECTED”
"So one of us knows how to work the time trousers here, and has in fact engineered them in a mind bogglingly short amount of time, so it makes sense for them to step after Tempus. The other person will have to go back in time into your life, re-enact your actions and be in possession of your genetic code. I think the choice is pretty clear, sir."
The Captain nodded his head gravely and stepped toward me, resolve in his eyes and cymbal shrapnel in his hair. "I understand," he said and lifted me bodily out of the trousers.
"Wait, what?" I asked, “No! The other way round. I stay in your trousers! You jump in those pants!" I yelled at Space, hopefully for the last time.
He looked cautiously between the trousers, myself and that first portal, confusion creasing his face, before solemnly depositing me back in the gaudy time machine.
“Okay. But you could have been more clear,” he murmurred as he squared up to that first shimmering portal.
"I guess we’ll see if my calculations worked," I muttered as I ran my hands down the controls of the trousers, fingering the buttons around the posterior and crotch. I flicked the purloined toggles and activated the chrono circuits as I had observed Tempus doing. I felt a thrum of energy shoot through my trousers and they vibrated pleasingly for a second, filling with potential unreleased energy. Story of my life.
"NINE MINUTES REMAIN UNTIL IMPACT”
"Now or never, Funkworthy,” Space hollered over the building hum of energy. His eyes darting off over my shoulder in alarm. I followed his gaze. out of the window I could see a buffer appear, almost. There was a flickering inconsistent shifting to the pattern of the stars that was like looking at a gas leak or a Predator; not quite visible but not invisible either. But the sense of the thing was there. It was a sheet of energy coming at us, contained within was a whole different universe that Tempus had designed. I had no intention of being a part of. I looked back at Space and all alarm had left him. He was ready, coiled by the pants and prepared to spring into a previous adventure. I activated the toggle at the front of the trousers and the thrumming energy coursed up through the fabric of the trousers, sleeves to spaver. A purplish energy shot out in front of me at my behest and a tear in the fabric of space and time formed in front of me. In another flick the portal would swallow me up, take me on the path that Tempus had already bored out.
"Well, this is it," I called over.
"Scared? Apprehensive? You’ve got big trousers to fill there."
"I’m not terribly thrilled. I could be going to any point in time and space. And you know this time travel stuff; it can get awfully confusing."
Space nodded. "I’ve already told you the words that will guide you through all this convoluted nonsense, Ebenezer."
"You have? Must have missed that."
He raised his finger in the air, expounding. "There are only three constants in the universe: Time, Space and Space Hardcore." He lowered his finger, lesson imparted. "Does that help?"
"You know what? The strange thing is, it actually does. So, Captain, if all of this goes badly-”
“Yes?”
He thought for a second then proclaimed in his most proclaim-y voice. “Remember me as a….as a Time Warrior. As a man who was never defeated by any manner of portal nor any type of pant!”
“Sounds good.”
He smiled over at me. We shared a nod. If we could we would have exchanged a manly handshake but we both knew it was impractical.
"It’s time," Space said, punning as much as circumstance allowed.
"B MINUS EIGHT MINUTES AND-"
"Oh shut up," I interrupted.
My hand delved to the crotch of my trousers.
Space stepped into his enemy’s pants
And time swallowed us both.
Interlude One
The Rasputin Stalemate
ʘ
Awarded third place in the Second Annual Space Hardcore Appreciation Society Annual Meeting
Grade: C+
Good effort, Mister DeLaroux. We really value your entry into this (apparently regular) event. I have been instructed to pass on a few notes on your submission. Firstly, regarding the florid nature of your prose: your prose is not florid enough to place higher. Also, the mentions of Captain Space Hardcore are felt not to be frequent enough by the Captain. Lastly, the Captain advises you to begin your story with a quotation from another work. It will help set up the themes of the chapter and makes you appear more well read. Please do not be discouraged and try again next year for the chance to win the ‘prize’ of an audience with, and a locket of hair from, Captain Space Hardcore. Take that how you will. Perhaps we shall hear from you again.
Yours,
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 7