The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure

by Michael Ronson

  He sighed and let him go on. He was used to the jibes, the jostling of ranks, the testosterone.

  The other man took a long sip of some cold coffee. “This isn't your mama's pantry. We're talking about raiding here, Commadore. This isn't even a regular jail. This is a fortress. A fortress inside an asteroid belt and, hey, just for fun that asteroid belt is squeezed between two-count em, two- black holes. Oh, but that's where the fun begins. If you even can get in there you're looking at security countermeasures that make COAR Prime Command look like your mama's girdle drawer. Each guard and prisoner is implanted with biometric implants so that the prison itself knows where they are at any point. Anything organic without an implant touches down there and it gets blasted. Anyone goes in a restricted area? Blasted. Anyone goes to the toilet outside proper times? Blasted and flushed. It's impregnable.”

  “I know the problems, Colonel. I called you in for solutions.”

  He smiled thinly back, the bastard had an answer for everything. “Well, there is one man. One man who managed to escape that place, couple years ago. Crazy sonofabitch and I should know; I trained him. Used to work for the Agency before he had a crisis of conscience about his work. Only man alive to ever escape from Alcatraz 2.0. Atticus King. Maybe you've heard of him.” A concerned murmur went round the room, and the Colonel nodded, satisfied. “I'll take that as a yes. He escaped. If anyone can get back into that place, it's him.”

  “Well it looks like we need him. Where is he now?”

  The Colonel rifled through some files. “He's in a max security lockup in the Nerbulon system. We'll need to extract him from there first.” He said with finality.

  Across the room another elderly Major stirred. “Extract him from there, huh?” he asked harshly, “Just like that? This isn't your Mama's panty drawer we're raiding here. You know anything about that prison, Peterson?”

  “No.”

  The colonel scoffed, “Let me tell you about the Nerbulon Prison, son. She’s a Securimax institution of Omega six level. Some places are happy being just one impregnable cube- not this place. It's made up of over a thousand cube rooms and-just for kicks- every day those cubes rearrange into a different shape. A different prison every day. And just to add to the party, each room is monitored by its own AI system. It’s also inside a black hole. It's impossible to escape from. Absolutely impossible. Except...”

  “Except?”

  “Except for one man. Staff Sergeant Benedict Thunderknife. A few years ago he was locked up for a crime he didn't commit. But the Staff Sergeant doesn't exactly like to be cooped up so he...well he just up and escaped. First recorded escape in that place's history. God knows how he managed it but if you want to get this Atticus King guy out from that securimax prison to extract your agent, you'll need Thunderknife.”

  “Well, where can we find him?”

  The colonel frowned. “Last I heard he was cooling his heels in a lockup in the Zepa Quadrant, some place called The Kiln. You'll need to spring him from there if you want him.”

  Another voice broke in. All eyes turned to the corner of the room. The man, who had been smoking silently for the meeting suddenly filled the room with sarcastic laughter.

  “Something funny?” the Major asked.

  “Spring him? From the Kiln? This ain't your Mama's cookie jar we're talking about, gentlemen. This is the most secure fortress that has ever been built by human hands. Only it wasn’t humans who built it- legend goes that this prison was built by an ancient race of sentient maze-people. Only one man has ever successfully managed to escape it and you won't find Trent Navarro to be the obliging sort. Not so long as he's imprisoned in the phantom zone. If you want him to rescue Benedict Thunderknife who will rescue Atticus King who will rescue your agent, then we'll have to rescue my man from the Phantom zone.”

  “You just plan to walk into the Phantom Zone?” came a new voice, “This isn't your mama's candy bag we're talking about, it's a prison that exists in a quantum state between realities. And only one man ever had the brass goddamn balls to escape from that place. Detective Brick Steadyfist is his name. If you want Trent Navarro out you'll need my man. Only problem is that he's currently indisposed. He's locked up in a place called the Shatterdome. Gotta get him out of there first.”

  A fresh voice piped up. “Out of the Shatterdome? That place is not exactly you Mama's velodrome, son; you can't just breeze in and out. There's no escape from there. Well except for one-”

  The Commadore made a loud, exasperated noise until everyone in the room stopped listing imprisoned badasses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked around.

  “Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight- we need Brick Stadyfist to rescue Trent Navarro, to extract Benedict Thunderknife, to spring Atticus King who's the only one who knows how to get my agent out of the prison he’s in now?”

  A young officer at the back spoke up “And there's only one man who can get Steadyfist out: a crazy sonofabitch called Lance Corporal Scott Bukkake. Only one to ever escape from the Shatterd-”

  “Shut up, Tim!”

  Suitably chastened Tim shut up. The Major looked around the room wearily.

  “This is too many jailbreaks. Way too many. I only need one agent extracted. I need someone to infiltrate one prison and get him out. Someone who is already free and not being held in some damn inescapable prison built in the heart of a dying sun or something-”

  “You mean The Crucible? That's a prison. I hear only one man ever escaped that place-”

  “Shut. Up. TIM! No other escaped convicts. No more impossible prisons. I need a COAR agent or a subcontractor to do this job. Now, I need you people to go and find me someone like that.”

  The Colonel sneered at that. “Someone willing to go into this joint and extract a field agent? They'd have to be crazy or suicidal. Nobody would ever take that job, it's impossible. People like that don't just fall from the sky.”

  It was then that the comm on desk buzzed. The Commodore frowned down at it, as though the comm itself had done something wrong. He had told his assistant that he was not to be disturbed. He thumbed the switch.

  “This had better be good,” he growled.

  The voice crackled from the other end. “Sir, there's a Captain Space Hardcore out here to see you. He's very insistent. Something about a dress regulations and how he isn’t being allowed to wear a cape with his uniform? And….What’s that? Uh huh...Yes, Captain. He says he’d like to also address what he calls the ‘codpiece situation’. Shall I send him away?”

  The Major looked up, a smile threatening the sides of his mouth, his eyes widening as a thought formed. The other men shared looks and whispers.

  He thumbed the comm link open again, smiling for the first time in days. “No, Doris, on the contrary. I think we'd all like to see Captain Hardcore.”

  Part Two

  ʘ

  Section Two:

  The Detective and the Hologram

  Chapter Twelve

  A Night in London/ The Captain Undone?

  * * *

  The city lies dumb before my love

  Etherized like a big sick cow,

  A maze of shattered promises

  squealing like a painted sow

  I picked a gaslit city street

  and saw a weeping wid-ow

  I cupped her face in my sad hands

  and gave her tears a blow

  T.E Selwin

  Madness in the Porcine City

  Ѻ

  The trousers pulled me roughly through the tunnel and the man ahead of me fled.

  I sighted Tempus through the shifting lights and laid myself flat in the stream. I felt my velocity increase, as I laid myself torpedo-flat in the current. He shifted quickly to the one side, flailing in the direction of an evasive manoeuvre and pulled an inside-out right turn to the north-down of what smelled like a Tuesday (it is difficult to give precise directions of transit within a lozenge of time). I caught sight of him just as he passed into the permea
ble shimmering wall of a vein of time. He tore through the wall like a bullet entering a jelly, leaving behind a shimmering silvery scar of his passage and disappeared into some unknown part of history.

  I grimaced. No choice but to go after him at full speed, I thought and I angled my body for his entry hole before it shifted away on the tides within this time tube. He would land ahead of me; that much I knew, but I hoped that the difference now would at least be negligible. No weeks of planning this time.

  I cringed as the wall of ticking, blue energy rushed up to meet me like a lake made of quivering physics. I hit it. I went through that same sickening lurch as I had done before: the feeling of falling off one’s chair sideways whilst yawning in a clock factory.

  Flwamp; the sound of a breach in the universe being headbutted open. And silence poured in beyond it.

  I let a beat pass as my body adjusted to the feeling of a solid time-state-when-place then opened my senses to take in the period.

  Smog.

  The sound of bells.

  A lingering taste of jelly mixed with eels.

  The unmistakable smell of top hats.

  Where...or when could I be?

  I got to my feet, shivering against the chill and looked around me. The ground was scorched clean in a precise circle where the tunnel had collapsed. As I stood uncertainly I could still see the remains of scorched seconds flutter down around me like spontaneously combusted moths. Wherever I was, I couldn’t help but feel slightly conspicuous. Maybe it was my alien physiology, maybe it was my tasteful but slightly bulky wrist computer, it could have been the mental asylum overalls or maybe it was my solid gold trousers. Whatever the case, I felt out of place. I tested my unsteady feet, sure that I had to flee the scene of my arrival, find some local garb to hide myself in and somehow discern the when of where I had ended up- and fast. For all I knew Tempus was days ahead of me and already had the Space of this day at his mercy.

  I wandered over to an adjoining market square. A shifting river of regal mutton chops, monocles and glittering pocket watches passed to and fro, in many cases attached to portly people; dapper gents waistcoated to within an inch of their lives steered through the crowd like husky trams while among their feet ran a separate stream of hessian-clothed urchins whose sooty cheeks barely hid a sallow complexion.

  One such specimen paused before me for a brief second when a meaty hand fell on his shoulder and hoisted him bodily into the air.

  “Wot ‘ave we ‘ere? Anuver bloody orphan is it? Well we can put you and the rest of your kind to good use can’t we? You’ll get to Mr Kingdom Brunel’s orphan factory, my lad. You’ll contribute to this industrial revolution. I’ve had it to the tip of my top hat with you blighters!”

  The lad eyed me desperately as the uniformed fellow stuffed him into a crate and let out a final plaintive cry to me:

  “Cor Blimey, guv’nor! As Queen Victoria as my witness this is a grim time to be an escaped chimney sweep an’ no mistake!”

  As the hirsute childstuffer swung his gaze around I ducked behind a bollard, lest he mistake me for one of these ‘chimney’ people. I cursed inwardly. These people were giving me absolutely no clues of the era. But I supposed I couldn’t expect them to go around shouting the date for errant time travellers. I could pretty safely assume it was Earth 1, pre-cataclysm, but that was about all. I would have to do some detective work.

  I summoned up my courage and darted into the town square. The throng of foot traffic swallowed me up and made me just an unusual blip in the grey and black crowd. By sheer speed and through the deftness of my hands I managed to retrieve a rough shawl from around the prostrate frame of a miser and bundled it around my shoulders quickly. The thick and rough fabric smelled of rats and gin but it was imperative to hide myself and my ostentatious trousers, besides, it is usually an idea, I thought to pass as one of the underclass. There was a camaraderie and openness amongst the impoverished and overlooked that I could use to my advantage to gain information. The bond of the downtrodden is strong and universal, I thought. If I could pass myself off as a pauper I could endear myself to them and learn of where I was; a cheap trick perhaps but effective.

  “Oi! Tha’ wanka in the gold trousers stole me bloomin’ shawl,” came the piercing cry from behind me.

  I glanced back, seeing a de-robed crone, surrounded by urchins of all sizes and varieties of burliness looking out past her pointing finger and directly at me.

  I turned on my heel and ran down the nearest alleyway, cursing the bond of the downtrodden that was compelling these men to pelt after me, throwing clods of mud and loose turnips in my direction as the natural speed advantage of my people (coupled with my ability to stick to walls) allowed me to press my lead and lose them somewhere around the third dank alleyway in my escape path.

  I emerged, some minutes after I had seen my pursuers retreat to wherever they had come from, I found myself looking at a fog-addled cobblestone street at night. Some lads with long sticks were lighting gas lamplights which served to illuminate the rosy cheeked prostitutes who invariably leant against them. I scanned the area. Across from me a child working a hand-bell like a whip was stood next to a stack of newspapers. I wrapped my disguise closer and approached.

  I took up the paper. A date was mine: November 3rd 1892.

  A place, furthermore, extrapolated from the publication’s title: The Londinium Globe. So, I was either in Londinium or the planet of Globe (a fearful place, terrifyingly flat). I bet on the former. I consulted my wrist-computer for a Hardcore from this era but came up with nothing concrete save the initials ‘SH’. Curious but not helpful. I scrolled further on the captain’s family tree and found that the initials ‘S’ and ‘H’ clung to each of them like monkeys on a sinking pedalo. Perhaps the publication would help more. I turned to the back of the paper, where the ads lay. I flicked through the section with haste, scanning as quick as I was able to find combinations of these two initials.

  “...Solemn horticulture...”. No. I scanned further, quicker

  “sympathetically hairy.” No.

  “swordfish hire.” Intriguing but fruitless

  I flicked the paper quicker, past the halfway mark with no more hints. “sarcastic horseshow”, No!

  I was nearing the end of the publication when I saw it.

  “Call S.H”. I nearly shrieked in delight. I read the whole article.

  “Consulting detective. If a problem is too much for the inept law enforcement services, bring any engaging problems to London’s finest analytical mind. Call S.H 221A Baker street. Any hour.”

  I slapped the paper in joy and committed the address to memory. I should have known- ‘consulting detective’ was just the fit for Space in this area; respected but independent and with plenty of opportunity for adventure and waterfall fights. Finally feeling like I was starting to get a steady footing in this era, I turned in satisfaction and entered the address to my wrist-computer. To think I had thought that I would need the ‘bond of the underclass’! I should have known better than that. The proletariat here seemed as numerous as they were slow in foot chases and the thought of passing myself off as one of them seemed ludicrous. Even though, I reflected, I suspected I could still garner the these simple people easily enough. After all, the peasant class-

  “Oi! That wanka in the gold trousers ‘as gone an’ stolen a paper!” I heard the cry from behind me.

  It was the newspaper lad, pointing an accusing finger at me and my borrowed periodical. Almost instantly a crowd of urchins coalesced around him, some of whom I fancied I recognized from the last time.

  Damned bond of the downtrodden, I thought.

  I turned on my heel and ran down a street, my pursuers’ heavy footfalls ringing behind me.

  ---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---

  Whoosh!

  I rocketed through the weird wobbly tube of time like some kind of powerful weapon- probably a rocket- and made ready to slide into my own waiting body like a stealth proctologist.
>
  I didn’t seem to have a body right now -which was unusual for me- but I could still feel things. I could hear as well; the warning voice of Kronis station rang distantly behind me. All I knew is that a second ago I had stepped through another pair of Tempus’ pants and somewhere in front of me lay my younger body, ready and waiting and lightly oiled, unaware I that it was about to receive me- whatever ‘me’ was at this point. A soul? A smell? A sense of dashing adventure? An essence? An energy? A feeling? A passion? A roving heat?

  What even was I? It was an engaging thought, but one I’d leave for the philosophers, my biographers and my GP. Right now, action called to me like a distant parrot.

  All around was a wash in swishing energies and blinding lights and a roar like a tsunami screaming through a broken microphone. It was like being fired down a flume made of spinning plasma or being pushed down a hill with kaleidoscopes taped over your eyes or maybe it was like being trapped inside a tie dye tumble drier. It was hard to describe, and I admit that I could only speak with authority on two of the three preceding analogies.

  I saw my body ahead of me, coalescing and forming as if made from the melange of roiling colour, my underappreciated rear end becoming real, forming like a muscular cloud before me. It swam into view and I started to float toward it, as if caught in a tractor beam, and I dutifully floated towards it slowly, like a tractor.