I stared at the side of his face for a while but he was too busy looking at Tempus.
It was the headaches again. A good excuse. I let the pain of it swallow me up and excused myself from the table. The story was done anyway. As I left it was just a din of applause for the professor. The blue-tinged light of Erdinger hung outside the window, shifting like the hum of conversation around the party.
I wandered away from the warm embrace of the conversation and back up through the observation deck of the Kronis station. It was abandoned, naturally, but the raised platform looked down on it all. It looked down on the festivities, the orchestral dias, all of the proceedings. In my queer mood it seemed the more comfortable place to be. I rattled the ice in my drink in the peace of the deck and let myself feel at home, perhaps for the first time, within the Kronis station.
Epilogue
* * *
“Endings are an invention,” he said.
“What does it mean? To end? It’s a grand cosmic absurdity. It just doesn’t exist. We are all stuck in an endless cycle. Time, matter, life death, being, un-being. It’s a mad merry-go-round, Arthur. We might think that something is over but that’s simply because we can’t recognize the re-births happening all around us every instant.”
I sighed and spoke once more. “Listen, it’s a simple question, Brian; did you finish my yoghurt?”
Hellbert Threnby
Weep a River through Thy Face
Ѻ
The door swooshed open, as doors do, and he stood for a moment silhouetted in the ambient noise and warm light of the party outside.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, a touch irritably, “Is it the dreams again?”
The door whooshed closed behind Space, who just stood there, being right.
They had been getting worse of late, they had been accelerating as if in anticipation for this very party. The whole evening had been a wash of roiling emotions, foreboding one minute, then a huge wave of relief and all the while a nagging sense of déjà vu. Well, not déjà vu entirely. It was like the feeling of missing something that had never been there; the sensation of illusory loss like when you wake from a dream and feel grief at losing your life in that dreamworld. A memory of a phantom pain. This queer sensation was almost constant as I spoke to Tempus.
“Yes, the dreams,” I snapped. Space had been irritatingly arch about all of this.
“The dreams where you hang out with me throughout time?” he smirked.
“The dreams where I save you throughout time from Professor Tempus. Save you again and again. Then-”
“You save me,” he said. He arched one eyebrow at me, then, after a second he arched the other one for extra emphasis.
“Yes.”
He furrowed his brows only so he could re-arch them with extra vigour.
“I know, I know what you said, it’s all just inspired by the historical versions of you, I saw.”
He nodded at me.
“But...There’s something else. Something more. I feel as though I’m near to something- some other reality. And it all ends up here. The other visions- they’re not about you at all. You step through a portal carrying a chromoton de-synchronizer then….. Then nothing. I wake up-”
“-And cowboy me and detective-me and knight-me and Native American-me and construction worker-me aren’t there to help?”
“Only half of those are real past versions of you,” I snapped, “and no, they’re back in time, through the pants!”
Space arched his whole face at me. It was quite something.
“Why is it,” he asked after a long and deliberate pause, “that when you describe your dreams to me, repeatedly, it is to be taken as some kind of urgent time travel dilemma, yet when I describe my dreams to you, it is invariably a matter for Human Resources?”
“Well, number one, you’re a disgusting person, number two, cartoons on post-its still count as ‘telling me’ so stop that, and number three, because some of my dreams are true.”
“True,” he said. How could one word have so many quotation marks attached to it?
He had explained it to me. Many times.
We had gone to save Bathby’s station, then we had gone to Tempus’. But it had all gone south at the last minute. Space had used some of Tempus’ time travel prototypes to travel back in time. Many times. After a bunch of aborted attempts at saving the day he had gone to get some backup from his ancestors and returned in force to do just that. That was what I had witnessed. Nothing more, nothing less. It was an extraordinary thing, unbelievable even.
Why then did I have the nagging feeling that something else was going on?
The dreams didn’t help. It was a jumble of images. Broken storylines from different universes. I was in a cowboy showdown in one, a contemporary ship’s captain in another, and in another trapped on this very deck looking at a chromoton desynchronizer. Then there were others of a story trapped in my head and a firing a ship’s lasers at a point before the universe was born. In that one I was firing at Space somehow, causing something Big.
And another thing was off. Something we both had seen.
“What about your ancestors?”
“What about them? They’re gone.”
“No, I mean, what they are. It makes no sense.”
“Your ancestors make no sense!”
“No, this isn’t an insult. Listen, your ancestor was a PI in Victorian England. Another ancestor was a sheriff. They’re all so…Like you….It’s almost like….”
“Go on. “ Space prodded “It’s almost like what?”
I shook my head, persisted. “It’s almost like they all ARE you except just…displaced in time. Take me, for example. I’m not at all like my dad, and I’m certainly not like any of my grandads. Take it further. Who is exactly like their great great grandfather? Nobody. But you? I’ve looked at your family tree. I’ve even MET some. In every time period there is someone exactly like you, with a name exactly like yours, whose behaviour seems to be exactly like yours.”
“I have very strong genes.”
“So do other people but that doesn’t mean that their forebear from eight hundred years ago will share their profession, jawline and penchant for puns.”
He shook his head softly. “What miserable families,” he murmured.
“I’m serious! The only explanation I have is, well, it’s pretty nuts. It’s bananas actually. It’s nuts, bananas and the rest of the dessert counter.”
He smiled an indulgent smile. “Sounds delicious, let’s have it.”
“It’s almost like…Like that explosion did happen, and you did go outside of time and- and this is bananas and nuts, remember?- you somehow splintered yourself off into every single time of history. It’s like you’re a seam running through all of history.”
“I’m a constant seam?” he asked.
“That’s the only way to explain your predecessors.”
He nodded. “I recur.”
“Yup, I replied.
“Constantly,” His tone was strange.
“Yes, it’s as though you- the existence of some iteration of you is a universal constant. You have time, space and-”
“-Space Hardcore,” he finished.
Outside of us the universe shifted. We let its silence pass for seconds.
He looked at me. The blue shifting corpse firework light outside the window painted half his face a shifting blue. Maybe it was the light but I found his expression unreadable and that was rare. Space was seldom known for his poker face, hell, he had to wear a mask to play snap.
“It’s as though,” he started, “during the Big Bang there was a little drop of me in there, and that, as everything expanded, that little drop ran through everything, like gravity does, like matter itself. It’s as though I- Captain Space Hardcore was responsible for all of Creation.”
He spreads his arms out, as if to encircle all that was.
I rolled my eyes at that a little. “Well let’s not get too grandiose here,
Captain. I know why you’re saying that.” I motioned out of the window. “We are at the Kronis station, after all- the nearest point to what the experts say is the middle point of the universe- the most probable site of what we’d call a ‘Big Bang’’ But to think that you’re a fundamental part of the universe?”
He smiled and nodded. “A bit much?”
“Even for you.”
He smiled into the floor. “Bananas,” he agreed
“Bananas and nuts.”
“Quite.”
We shared a quiet moment in that shifting blue light, thinking about time in the fulcrum of creation. Somewhere far away hundreds of guests had started singing a halting, jigging drinking song. I shook my head to clear away the notions nesting there. The headache seemed to pass, like a cloud before the sun, the dreams feeling more flimsy.
“Much too grandiose,” I concluded. After a second’s consideration I laughed. “After all, if you were there to be an ingredient in the Big Bang- if you were there before to add yourself into it- what would that make you?”
The blue radiation light had dissipated a little by then. Darker now, I could barely make out his face by the starlight, but his eyes shone with mischief, even more so than usual.
“What would that make you?” I asked again.
He adopted a breezy tone. “Oh come on Ebenezer. Don’t bother with all this time travel nonsense. It hurts the brain and it detracts from the drinking time. I’d warrant that my guests are missing me by now.”
He motioned past me to the main deck, but I was too caught up in the thought.
“It’s unthinkable,” I said.
Space belched lightly into the back of his hand and swayed a little on his feet. “Then don’t think about it.” He advised brightly. His eyes slipped by me towards the sounds of the party. The low and merry din of a dozen tipsy conversations and stumbling communal dances called out toward our little corridor.
“It’s ….It’s illogical,” I persisted.
“Quite,” he said as airily as a man with little to no interest in logic.
“No,” I said finally. I had to dismiss this nonsense from my own head. I pounded my fist into my hand decisively. “It’s absolutely impossible.”
He looked at me then, paused halfway to the door leading back to the celebration, his golden tuxedo shining in the starlight.
“Impossible?” he asked.
His eyes crinkled and sparkled. Reflected in them were the stars outside the station, keeping the mischief company.
He clapped me warmly around the shoulder and pulled me close for a moment, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Funkworthy, my friend,” he said with a sly grin, “you should know by now.”
“What?”
“Impossible is a relative term.”
The End
(for real this time)
Captain Space Hardcore will return in…
Captain Space Hardcore Punches the Devil
Lucifer. The Morning Star. Abaddon. Beelzebub. Shania’t’wain. Pazuzzu. Shamwow. Argos. Legin Farr’aage. Tim.
The devil has many names.
But for Captain Space Hardcore- Intergalactic Adventurer and five time Olympic dickathlete– the ancient enemy only has one title; Fist Fodder.
On the trail of a mind melting futuristic drug called Cume the Captain and his manservant Ebenezer Funkworthy stumble upon an ancient evil that threatens to consume the universe in lava, pitchforks and screams. The devil’s back in town and there’s only one man and four solid knuckles that are standing in his way.
But unfortunately for our Captain the path to a solid fisting is not a smooth one. When is it? The Coalition of Rational Agnostic Beliefs aim to stop him, and that’s one set of CRABs that can’t be dispelled by an antibiotic cream and some vigorous combing. They’re an order of monks as shadowy as they are uncertain and they’re willing to kill to maintain their balance. Kill who? Captain Space Hardcore; that’s who.
But he’s a man who’s never been killed before and he’s not about to start now.
The stage is set for a three way battle between the forces of darkness, an army of CRABs and one man with an uppercut that he suspects could eradicate this ancient evil once and for all.
So join us, dear reader, for the next adventure and delve into the mouth of madness, the heart of horror, and the rectum of religion as the Captain fends of demonic apparitions as violently as he fends off any form of theological thought in his unyielding quest to-
Punch the Devil!
Biography
Genius. Voice of a generation. Pioneer. Innovator. Renovator. Forklift truck operator.
Can a man have so many jobs while still drawing an unemployment allowance from the government? One man can; Michael Ronson, the author who, in his own words “Bestrides the narrow worlds of science fiction and werewolf-based-erotica like a colossus.”
However, Ronson was not always seen as a colossus. Born into a modest middle class family as a baby, the infant Ronson had none of the awards, credited works or bodily functions that he would become so lauded for. Spending the first two years of his life mastering oral communication, the alphabet and bipedal locomotion (all integral skills for science fiction authors) Ronson turned into a precocious child who quickly tired of the tawdry pursuits of infants and began looking towards the skies (or, when indoors, ceilings).
School was a chore for Ronson and chores were even more so. At school, although undeniably brilliant in academia and an early bloomer when it came to pubic hair growth, his easily obtained excellence threatened those around him who chose to maliciously ignore him or marked his tests with failing grades. The ivory towers of academia and their GCSE tests held no interest for the young Michael Ronson. Instead of bowing down to the system and allowing himself to be graded and judged like pork chops or tyres, he instead committed his first act of social and political subversion by deliberately choosing to fail the tests to show the powers that be that their systems were fallible.
So began a life spent raging against the machine. This includes a brief period of raging against Rage Against the Machine who Ronson sued in late 2003, claiming that they stole his idea for combining politically conscious rap with random guitar noises which he patented while working as a street musician under the name Ray Guevarra.
Ronsons love affair with the written word started in his teens and assured that he was ejected and banned from a number of public libraries on the grounds of lewd conduct. However, in these brief visits Ronson had been able to fully read as many as five quite long books and at least as many dust jackets. Satisfied with his self-education, he decided he had consumed enough of other people’s material and would instead dedicate himself to producing his own literature, unpolluted by the ideas of others.
His early years were rotten with productivity. Ronson started off with experimental, symbolic fiction. His early novel, I Eat Clouds was a heavily metaphysical tome that many readers considered incomprehensible to the point of being an elaborate prank. The follow up, Christ is a Bidet, was more daring yet, being written almost entirely in numbers and wingdings. Having quickly found that experimental fiction was undervalued and hard, Ronson moved past it quickly, like a cheetah sprinting past a factory fire. Ronson entered the more lucrative area of genre fiction.
Ronson’s turned to detective fiction. The Dame With All Speeding Tickets was a hard boiled noir thriller set in a traffic court, Bang Said The Gun was a gritty noir set in a Dundee pharmacy and Cripes! A Cadaver was an uncompromising whodunnit set in the murky world of Roman gladiatorial combat. Despite their excellent writing and even excellenter brevity, none found popularity. It was clear that the lowered standards of science fiction, not to mention decrease in the need for historical accuracy, were calling to the journeyman artist.
Though Ronsons first sci-fi attempt What If There Was A Rocket Ship?, was seen as a basic attempt at the genre, he quickly found his footing with the follow-up Night Of The Rocket Ship, and
, like the eponymous Ship of his stories, Ronson’s career was now on a merciless and terrifying upward trajectory that would never end.
The People on Mars are Bastards was a terrifying portent of a future where man had landed on Mars to find its indigenous people were absolute dicks all the time. The sequel Mars: The Red Planet (Because we set it on Fire) was a treatise on colonialism, pollution and greed, probably. The acclaimed ‘Mars Cycle’ would end with Somebody Extinguish Mars, Please, which was a chilling reaction to the Gulf War actually preceded the war itself by a full nine years, a testament to Ronson’s forward- looking writing style not to mention his clairvoyance.
Ronson had found his genre. The experimental nature, anything-goes plotting and almost unlimited riches given to science fiction authors called to Ronson like a lost mule. Over the next year, Ronson would churn out sci fi books with the mechanical efficiency as a sausage factory during the busy sausage season of March. He would experiment with genres like dystopia , as in 1994 (which saw a future where all of humanity was monitored by one enormous camera mounted on the moon) and utopia, as in And The Mirror Gazes Back (which has the exact same premise as 1994, but a more cheerful tone and fewer nazis). He dabbled in racial politics in The Neighbourhood which depicted a terrifying future where being black was illegal between the hours of 7 and 9pm on weekends before going on to to attack sexual norms in In the Valley of Lesbos, which painted a society where all lesbians were banished to Jupiter, but all male homosexuals were forced to work in property law- a future many fear we may be moving toward today. But these attacks on social norms were received with bafflement by all sides of the political spectrum. Peter Tatchell of The Times famously wrote : “Like a dog wielding a firehose Ronson splashes his words and characters around with an enthusiasm that almost matches his lack of focus that leaves the reader baffled at the author’s own political stance, if one is even present.”
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 39