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

by Michael Ronson

  My shoulder slammed into Tempus and we fell backward together, and though I gripped his wrists I knew it was already too late, since no coarse sand met our fall. We were tumbling once again through the quivering nether-space of the time tunnel.

  And before the rift behind us closed I heard the Sweet Gulch chapel let out one ring. It followed us as we fell. The western desert fell behind us.

  Interlude Four

  *

  A Selections of Poems

  From The Compendium

  ‘Falling Stars: A History of The Falling Men in Verse’

  (2019, Penguin Classic Biscuits)

  Near Flanders Field

  By Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Peters

  In Flanders field the cannons sound

  As blood and carnage all surround

  In the trenches ‘neath grayest sky

  The sound of larks comes, by and by

  Scarce heard on this unhallowed ground

  Then another sound, loud, coarse and new

  The bleak French sky seems rent in two

  We look askance as two men fall

  Trading slurs and punches call

  From where they came, I’ve not a clue

  Queries one to his mate “World War Two?”

  “Perhaps. No matter. Have at you”

  They joust and scratch, in no man’s land

  Then in a flash there no man stands

  Since I saw them my questions only grew

  One question chills me beyond warmth of sun

  “World War Two?” Does that makes this World War One?

  I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  By William Jethro Wordsworth

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

  When all at once I heard a shout,

  A cry amongst yon daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Yells and shouting in the breeze.

  As if fallen from the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the milky way,

  They fell beneath a mighty pine

  Along the margin of a bay:

  Two figures wrestling at a glance,

  Tossing their heads in violent dance.

  The waves beside them danced; but they

  Out-did the roiling waves energy:

  A poet could not but feel fear,

  In such a hateful company:

  They grabbed each other by the pants

  And --flash!- were gone from in the plants

  Haiku no. 9

  By Q.G Jinn

  Two fighters struggle

  In a silent pond- pow!

  They go. Quiet now

  Part Three

  ʘ

  The End of Time and Space

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  A Return to Kronis

  * * *

  If at first you don’t succeed try, try again

  Martin McCall

  Russian Roulette; an official strategy Guide

  Ѻ

  A sound, distant but familiar.

  “Oh, it’s a trumpet fight you’re after, is it?”

  Yelled but far away, distorted through glass and through pain and through the sound of brass bashing musically off of a face. The glass came into existence presently as reality congealed around us, moving from its liquid state to solid reality, like jelly but more complex. The observation deck on Kronis station. It slotted itself together as the universe constructed itself around my feet. Below us was the Captain again- this time’s Captain, my time’s Captain, the man I had been journeying through thousands of years to get back to. He was in the middle of catching a timpani in the side of the temple and yelling when I saw him. I couldn’t help but smile, not so much at the sight of him falling down as a drum gave him a concussion but rather out of relief at being back in one’s own time. Even if you’re in the middle of a battle for your life one must take a second to appreciate the lack of cowboys, biplanes, dinosaurs and gladiators in one’s vicinity.

  But a fight was what I was in, no doubt. We had fallen together through that hole in Sweet Gulch and become entangled together. We fell through the time tunnel and through all of Earth’s history in one, great wrestling tussle. I remembered coming out of the tunnel and elbowing Tempus in the face in the chilly sky near surrounded by Art Deco skyscrapers, the next second we were back in the tunnel and Tempus had my throat in his hands. I landed a blow on him as we fell into a sodden field, my vision turning grey as biplanes wheeled overhead and artillery shells exploded around us. But as we fought the portal activated once more, Tempus lost grip on my windpipe and we found ourselves tumbling down a river as a gaggle of nearby neanderthals whooped and hollered. I had no notion how many time periods our flailing bodies had fallen through. All I knew was the look of hate and resignation on my enemy’s face as he had finally given up the fight, hit a button on the central part of his belt buckle and the tunnel had ripped us both finally, mercifully back here. Back to Kronis.

  I took only a few more seconds to observe Space getting hit in the spine with a bugle before I turned to face Tempus. I turned to face him, ready for a final fight. Then I turned to face him again. I turned back to face the first of him, shook my head to make sure my vision was correct and then turned to face him once more.

  “Oboes, eh? Have at th-ARGH!” came the voice below the three of us.

  Tempus stood as we had found him first of all, hands clasped arrogantly behind his back as he drank in the rhythmic beating below, but behind him was another, bloodier version of himself. This one was covered in welts and bruises. This was a man who had just had a fight over a few thousand years. This was my Tempus, panting heavily but still hypnotically transfixed by the spectacle below. We all watched it together for a short time. I will never admit that it was the least bit amusing.

  “Well?” asked the rigid and unruffled man, without turning.

  “I was not able to kill any of the priors,” my Tempus panted.

  “Why?”

  “Interference. This one,” he pointed to me, “was able to tune his trousers- they had gold trousers for some bloody reason- into my frequency and follow me through.”

  Unruffled looked imperiously around at me and glanced at my trousers. “Unexpected. Resourceful.”

  They spoke in the clipped shorthand of two people who knew each other’s minds as intimately as they knew their own, a phenomenon one observes mostly in twins, groups of psychic children and the terminally married.

  “Unexpected but not unworkable,” said my Tempus. “If we jam-”

  “The initial signal-”

  “Exactly. And mask the-”

  “Yes, the carrier wave-”

  “Absolutely. Initiate the-

  “Uh-huh. Hide the waveform-

  “But what if-”

  “No, they don’t have-”

  “Of course. Untrackable. However-”

  “Fourty six.”

  “Ah, but how would-”

  “Adjust seventy degrees, then-”

  “Red wire. Of course. Good.”

  “Yes.”

  “That works.”

  “Great.”

  “Oh and did you-”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it-?”

  “Oh yes even more so.”

  “And the-?”

  “Oh yes, to tiny chunks”

  “But what about-?”

  “Completed.”

  “And the dog?

  “Oh yes, to tiny chunks.”

  They both fell into a contented silence at that and stood there watching as below us I tried for the seventh time to stop Space from throwing a keytar at the third Tempus. I was failing.

  “Excuse me,” I said (by ‘I’ I mean the me in the observation deck), “I’ve come rather a long way to defeat you two. I don’t believe we finished our fight quite yet.”

  I put up my fists a little shakily. Having a fistfight for the span of human civilization will re
ally take it out of you. Both Tempuses looked round in mild surprise, as though they had forgotten that I was there. They both opened their mouth to speak but the battered Tempus tapped himself on the shoulder and his younger self nodded and went back to watching the violence below, unperturbed.

  “Yes, yes. Of course. We can finish this thing. Let’s take a leap a few minutes in the future when it’s just you, me and your Captain, shall we?” he seemed too calm.

  “Wh-what was all that about?” I gestured vaguely to his the other Tempus.

  “That? Oh, nothing. Just sorting some future business out.”

  “You have no future, Tempus!” I growled.

  He smiled thinly at that. “Of course. Shall we?” he motioned to his pelvis and raised his brows at me.

  “Wait, wait, stop condescending to me, damnit.”

  My Tempus glanced at his former self, who didn’t bother to look back. He just nodded and muttered, “You have two minutes till they come in.” My Tempus returned his gaze to me.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” he asked.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “Fair. Well, let me break it down for you. I’m about to defeat you. We’re about to skip ahead and watch Captain Space Hardcore die. And after we do, that time buffer will hit us, and all the changes that have been made through all of our timeline will take effect. Now, I haven’t managed to change too much so far, thanks to your meddling, but I did just do one valuable thing- I instructed myself,” he clapped his young self around the shoulder, “in how to make sure that you can’t follow us the next time round. His time round”

  “But-”

  “And this whole thing will re-play itself again, but with your meddling taken out. How do you think that will affect things? If next time round you can’t tune into my frequency? Can’t follow me?”

  I worked my mouth but I could think of nothing to say. Tempus started punching in numbers into his pants.

  “I’ll find a way,” I said finally.

  He didn’t look up “Perhaps. And if you do, we’ll play it out all over again and I’ll zip back here and tell myself the adjustments to make for the next run.”

  He smiled expansively as I could do little but open and close my mouth as words stubbornly failed to come out.

  “Elegant isn’t it? It’s like applying evolution to a single encounter, cutting away all the mistakes until I achieve the one perfect moment of revenge. That’s the one that will count, that’s what will stand. You could cut my head off right now and it would mean nothing. The future is coming, Mr Funkworthy, and that future is his death.”

  I could not see it yet but the time buffer lay out there in the black, coming to change everything. It was an elegant solution. Perfect even.

  “How many times have you done this?”

  He looked genuinely thoughtful. “I have absolutely no idea. Maybe this is our first go round. Maybe this is the millionth. It matters not. All that matters is that we are always working toward that one final perfect triumph.”

  My mind raced but I couldn’t find the answers. I had been grappling with temporal paradoxes for what seemed like days now, my mind felt sluggish and muddy, to the point where even the notion of ‘days’ was a wearying nonsense.

  “The orchestra fight is over. They’re approaching,” said the first Tempus.

  My enemy turned to me. “Well, that’s our cue. Let’s get to the finale, shall we? This version of me is feeling pretty roughed up and I’m about ready to win this thing.” He looked at me with pity then. My eyes were darting around as I still half mouthed some words. There had to be an answer. There had to be. Think. Think. My mind felt like a horse trying to gallop through three feet of sludge. He smiled and spoke as I did neither. “Maybe...Maybe in the final version of this you’re spared. You never know. My quarrel has never been with you, after all and you have conducted yourself with an intelligence and a tenacity that I can almost-”

  “They’re coming up the stairs.”

  My Tempus smiled apologetically at me. “Ah. No time for all that I guess. Ironic.”

  “We will beat you,” I said with as steady of a voice as I could muster.

  He smiled sadly. He fingered a knob on his crotch.

  “They’re outside. Go now.”

  “Okay. Come on then, Ebenezer. Come beat me.”

  I heard the hum of a motor as the door of the observation desk started to whoosh open but before it was even halfway open, I was back in the lights again, falling through the kaleidoscope for the last time. The last thing I glimpsed was my own face half obscured by the door. He looked fresh, he looked determined, he looked ready.

  But in a flash he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  The End of Time, The End of Space

  * * *

  There are only three constants in this universe: time, space and Space Hardcore

  Captain Space Hardcore (PhDD)

  The Captain’s Handbook

  Ѻ

  The observation deck was painted with the shifting opal hues of the nearby nebula. Its bruise-purple gas clouds let out a light that seemed to shift menacingly.

  You almost had to unfocus your eyes to see it- the time buffer, after all, that’s what was causing the wobbly effect. To be this aware of it, it had to be close. Staring out of the window directly towards where it was, one could barely make it out; your eyes tricked you into accepting the distortion. When you looked away it loomed right at you, seemed to have shape and form. There was some lesson there about the nature of time, but I was too tired to give it much thought. I was ready for this to be over and to never think about time again.

  Space was staring right out of the window. He ignored us as we popped into existence, even though I knew that he knew we were here. Even the proximity of time travel seemed to have the same unfortunate biological effect on him and he let out a little parp. But he was clearly going through something sombre, as he made neither a joke nor an excuse about it. He just continued to stare, heedless of any and all flatulence.

  I stepped instinctively towards him and noted the three pairs of pants strewn around the floor, deactivated. One still lay there, emitting the purple tinged portal above itself, its lights blinking odious red in sympathy with the chromoton destabilizer that still sat, with the quiet menace that bombs have, in the middle of the room.

  “Space, you can’t go in that last portal,” I yelled.

  He turned finally at that.

  For a moment I suspected some temporal foul play had been going on at this end of things too for it seemed as though Space himself had been replaced with a far older version of himself. His shoulders were slumped, his face was pale and drawn, even his voice, when it came seemed like a worn out reproduction of the genuine article.

  “Thank you, Ebenezer. I figured that part out,” he raised his eyebrows and finally looked towards Tempus who was standing still where we had phased in, assessing the situation. “Where does it take me then, this last one? Into the heart of a sun in 1847? Three miles underwater in 2766? Onto the surface of the moon in 1869?”

  Tempus smiled serenely, spoke softly. “No. Something much more grand. That last one takes you to where all the numbers run out, before anything whatsoever. That’s a portal to the place where all the dials read ‘zero’”

  Space closed his eyes and nodded. “Shouldn’t live too long there, I suspect.”

  My eyes darted between the two of them. I had suspected a lot of things might happen when we got back to the present. I had suspected to find Space cramming all the bombs and all the pants into an airlock, or perhaps cheerily setting fire to all the devices with scant regard for the efficacy of that plan. I had mostly suspected that, upon seeing Tempus he would simply fling himself violently upon him as he does to ninety seven percent of his problems (the physical, spiritual, financial and philosophical). I had very much suspected he would have sourced another gun or failing that a sharp stick or curtain rod and be waiting in ambush bu
t this? This shade? It was almost as if all of the pillars of his personality had been torn down.