Timecaster: Supersymmetry

by Konrath, J. A.

  He was probably looking for a doctor to do the transplant. Then he’d go to the SS Wisconsin for me and his wife. When he discovered we were gone, he’d try to get in touch with me, probably by calling on my headphone.

  But I could be dead by then. Alter-Talon made it clear he could harvest my parts even if I wasn’t alive.

  Of course, he wasn’t the one who had poisoned me. Sata was.

  Which meant I had to go to Sata.

  Luckily, Alter-Talon and I shared the same passwords, and I was able to access the Chicago Peace Department GPS uplink to locate Michio Sata.

  His address on this earth was the same as on mine, in Schaumburg.

  And according to a live satellite feed, he was home.

  Time to pay my evil mentor a visit.

  Chapter 3

  Alter-Talon stared at Dark Alter-Talon, amused by this turn of events. Science theorized there were an infinite number of parallel universes. If each universe also had a dark matter universe counterpart, that was infinity times two.

  Or something like that. Concepts like dark energy, dark flow, dark fluid—Alter-Talon couldn’t wrap his mind around those things. Supposedly there was something we couldn’t see that had gravitational pull. If Dark Alter-Talon said the pull was really an unseen universe within our own that was exactly the same as ours except for having more mass and being 3.4 hours ahead, so be it. The whole alternate worlds thing was crazy enough, why not add more crazy to the mix?

  Besides, if it were true, then this was an extraordinary opportunity. As a timecaster, Alter-Talon could use a TEV to see what happened in the past. But the future remained elusive.

  If Dark Alter-Talon were from 3.4 hours into the future, he would know what was going to happen for the next 3.4 hours. That gave them a tactical advantage.

  It might also be a smart idea to by some hyperlottery tickets.

  “We should buy some hyperlottery tickets,” Alter-Talon said.

  “I don’t know what the hyperlottery numbers are.”

  “You didn’t look before coming into the past?”

  “I didn’t know I was going into the past. It’s a long story.”

  “How about some sporting event? There’s a hyperbaseball game in Chicago today. Did you see who won?”#bu glance maybe I pu

  “Wasn’t paying attention. If you knew all you have to do in the next three point four hours—”

  “How about your DT?” Alter-Talon interrupted, pointing to Dark Alter-Talon’s digital tablet. “Is the information on it from three point four hours in the future?”

  “I haven’t checked.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Dark Alter-Talon made a face. “Why? You want to bet on sports? This earth is going to end in less than four hours. It’s going to blow up, along with any credits you have in the bank. AFAIK, Sata hasn’t invented a way to transfer credits through the multiverse.”

  Alter-Talon frowned. “Not that I’m against genocide, as you well know, but can we stop the earth from ending?”

  “Why? We can just go to a parallel earth.”

  “All my stuff is here.”

  “You’ll get new stuff.”

  Alter-Talon crossed his arms. “I don’t want to get new stuff.”

  “Neither did I. But all my stuff is gone.”

  Alter-Talon folded his arms over his chest. “Well, you’re not taking my stuff.”

  “Your stuff is going to be gone, too.”

  “Gentlemen…”

  They both turned and stared at Dr. Patel. She was standing in her living room, a supplication collar around her neck. She had a blossoming bruise on her chin, but her han

  ds were on her hips and her expressions was anything but cowed.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear that this planet only has three point four hours left—”

  “With all this time we’re wasting, it’s more like three point three.”

  “Whatever. You want me to do the transplant, but even with bot assistants, that surgery takes a minimum of three hours.”

  “That’s enough time,” both Talons said at once.

  “For one of you. But not for both of you.”

  Once again they each drew their guns and simultaneously pointed at one another.

  “But if myself and my family are going to die in three point four hours—”

  “Three point three,” they both corrected.

  “Then I have no reason to help either of you. So you’ll either have to save this planet, or take us with you so I can perform the surgery on a parallel earth.”

  Alter-Talon glanced at the woman, then backed tachyon emission visualizered to Incredibly, G at Dark Alter-Talon.

  “You want to hit her, or should I?”

  “I slapped her around when I first got here,” Dark Alter-Talon said. “It’s your turn.”

  Alter-Talon stepped up and slapped Dr. Patel across the cheek. Then he nodded and said, “I hear what you’re saying. I could play the raving psychotic and say something like ‘You’ll do whatever we tell you to do’ and then threaten you with unimaginable pain, but it’ll be quicker and easier just to take you and your family with us.”

  Patel brought a hand to her face. “So why did you hit me?”

  “Because I am, indeed, a raving psychotic.”

  Both Alter-Talon and Dark Alter-Talon began to laugh. It was a raving psychotic laugh.

  “Her children don’t get home from school until four,” Dark Alter-Talon said between giggles. “Her husband works until five.”

  “How do you know this?” Alter-Talon asked.

  “I went through all of this once, already. It didn’t work last time, but this time it will, because I know what’s coming.”

  “And because this time, you have help.”

  “Two are better than one,” Dark Alter-Talon agreed. “We have a window of two and a half hours to find and subdue both Talons before we need to get back here and deal with the doctor’s family.”

  “So where do we find them?” Alter-Talon asked.

  “It will be easy.” Dark Alter-Talon smiled wickedly. “Because I know where they are.”

  Chapter 4

  I left the beach, staggering onto the greentop like a hyperdrunk, my thoughts scrambled and my body getting weaker with each step. According to the DT, I was south of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The stretch of highway was flanked by living billboards, towering liquid crystal algae displays that showed commercials in high definition. These were tinted slightly green—overgrowth—and I spotted a recycle truck harvesting the biomatter from one of the screens. I needed a vehicle, but their tanker truck wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous. Instead, I wandered up to a red light and approached a man on a biofuel scooter. I put my hands on his handlebars while he stared at me, incredulous.

  “Sorry, buddy, but I’m stealing your scooter.”

  “You can’t take my scooter. You’ll be caught.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “But you’ll be caught.”

  “Please get off the scooter.”

  “You have absolutely zero chance to make suret glancehere areI puof getting away with this. You’ll go to jail.”

  “Get off the scooter, or I’ll punch you in the face.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t punch me in the face. You’ll get caught.”

  “I also need your gloves,” I said, eying the faux-leather.

  “You can’t—”

  I punched him in the face, pulled off his gloves, and stole his scooter. Not something I was proud of, but I did warn the guy.

  I took the highway heading south, the twelve-lane jammed with motorists and powerbockers. Every heliplane flying overhead made my shoulders bunch in anticipation of a nanotube net launch or TTS. But the obfuscation disk did its job, and no one could track my chip.

  It took me an hour to get to Schaumburg. Sata’s neighborhood on this earth closely resembled his neighborhood on my earth—thick fields of tall bamboo making the clover streets
resemble a labyrinth. His home was surrounded by an acre of hemp and kudzu, and I parked next to a concrete fountain—an indicator of extreme wealth because it took up real estate where foliage could be grown. Or in this case, overgrown. Sata was behind in cultivating his foliage.

  I climbed off the bike—

  —and promptly fell onto my face, my legs unable to support me.

  It took me a minute to get the circulation going and get back on my feet.

  I was worried. Really worried.

  Michio Sata was a formidable man. Though twice my age, he kept in excellent shape, maintaining a strict regimen of diet, exercise, and HGH steroids. He was a champion at the Japanese fighting art, kendo, and regularly kicked my ass at the sport.

  In my weakened condition, I didn’t have a chance subduing Sata. But I hoped I wouldn’t have to. In my universe, Sata had conspired against me with Alter-Talon. Since Alter-Talon and I were just alternate versions of the same person, I hoped I could fool Sata into thinking I was Alter-Talon long enough for me to gain some sort of advantage.

  A flimsy plan, but all I had.

  I pulled on the stolen gloves and warily approached the house, noticing more overgrowth, and dozens of small, brown rocks on the walkway.

  No, not rocks. Some kind of animal droppings.

  I got to the front door and hit the videobell.

  No answer.

  I pressed it again, wondering what I was going to do. If Sata wasn’t home, I could always break in and look for the antidote. But it was unlikely he had it in a bottle that was clearly labeled. Drinking random flasks of fluid in Sata’s lab probably wasn’t a wise idea.

  The monitor flickered on, and I tensed up.

  “Talon?” to make sureat. “Good luck.”G

  “Sata? WTF?”

  I’d expected him to be injured from our previous encounter, but this man wasn’t the same man I’d recently fought with. The Sata I was looking at was pale, gaunt, his eyes sunken and his hair ratty and snarled. He was at least sixty pounds lighter than the Sata I knew.

  This Sata looked about three breaths away from his last.

  “Please let me out,” Sata said. “I can’t—”

  And then he collapsed, the monitor going blank as his hand fell away from the button.

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around complicated physics scenarios like alternate realities, but I knew that if there were alternate versions of me and Teague, this might be an alternate version of Sata. One who might not want to kill me.

  Energized by the possibility, I quickly tried the doorknob. Locked. The door was solid, made of steel. A quick spin kick did nothing but hurt my foot.

  I began to walk the perimeter of the house. The windows were barred with carbon nanotube webbing—a change from his house on my earth. Nothing could get through that. I made my way around back, fighting discouragement, and noticed a ladder to the greenroof.

  Sata was rich. That meant his greenroof would have automatic drainage in case of heavy rains. Drainage required an access panel to service the pump, and those could usually be reached from both the roof and the crawlspace.

  In other words, a way inside.

  More animal droppings, probably raccoon, crunched under my feet, and as I began to climb the ladder I got that involuntary spasm of panic when my face encountered some unseen strands of spider web. I did a quick palm across my eyes and mouth—I hated spiders—and then continued up to the greenroof.

  Like the grounds, the roof was overgrown with foliage. But that was the least of Sata’s problems. What I’d thought was a spiderweb, and what I’d thought were raccoon droppings, each belonged to something else entirely. The entire roof was covered in a skein of white silk, shiny and glinting in the afternoon sun. Gray sacks hung from trees—the sucked-dry remains of birds and animals unlucky enough to wander up here.

  Oh… shit.

  It was a chickula nest.

  I’d only seen real-life chickulas once, at the hyperzoo, with Vicki after we first got married. Unfortunately for us, it had been feeding time. The hyperzookeeper had dropped a live cat into their nest (the cat population skyrocketed in the 30s due to a sandwich craze known as the PB&T) and the results were ugly.

  A chickula was only slightly bigger than a felis catus delicia, but twice as agile, a hundred times as dangerous, and, as far as I was concerned, much tastier. It looked like a large, feathered, gray spider, with six eyes, large wings that extended from its thorax, and eight thick, tender, juicy drumsticks, each ending with a three fingered claw. Between its spider-like mandibles it had a chicken-like beak, which could snap o to make sureat. “Good luck.”Gff a man’s finger while also administering a large dose of paralytic.

  Chickulas accounted for several hundred deaths per year in the USAC, but that number was low considering the number of unreported deaths in dissy communities. They were ugly, nasty, deadly little bastards, and by the size of the nest I guessed at least five had taken up residence on Sata’s greenroof. If Sata was indeed trying to escape his house, this explained why he hadn’t gotten out this way.

  I paused, watching for movement.

  The only thing I noticed was the swaying of several dozen animal corpses in the light breeze, hanging from Sata’s bamboo and hemp plants like dried, unappetizing fruit. I had no weapons, and it was well-known that a handful of chickulas could take down a man. One or two bites, a quick mummy wrap, and then painful feeding until dehydration or exsanguination, which could take days.

  But that was really a small price to pay for those delicious drumsticks. They practically melted in your mouth. I’m talking falling-off-the-bone goodness. They were so tasty, it almost made up for the number of casualties they caused.

  I waited, flexing my toes to get the circulation going, and then spotted the first chickula. Brownish gray, it was crouched under a yellow forsythia so coated with webbing it appeared to be dusted in snow. The creature’s six beady black eyes were locked onto mine, its delectable legs tucked against its body, feathered wings folded over its abdomen, ten centimeter mandibles opening and closing like garden shears.

  Yeech. How could something so creepy taste so good?

  I stepped onto the greenroof—

  —but my right foot couldn’t support me and I fell to my knees, then onto my chest.

  No!

  I instantly swiveled my neck around, checking in every possible direction to see where the attack came from.

  But nothing happened.

  I pushed up onto my knees, sticky web coating my palms, my heart rate doubling, which speeded up the progression of the nanopoison in my bloodstream.

  The only chickula I’d spotted remained in place, watching me but not moving.

  Maybe this would be easier that I thought.

  Keeping my eyes on the creature, I regained my footing and headed to the center of the rooftop, the likeliest place for a drain. The thin layer of webbing over the dead lawn made the grating hard to spot, but when I tapped the metal with my toe I knew I’d found it. I dropped to a knee, did another scan around for chickulas, and then reached down and pulled up the gate on its hinges.

  Almost immediately I felt a pinprick on my hand.

  It was followed by two more.

  Then a dozen more, all before I even looked down to see what was happening.

  My hands appeared to be wearing furry, brown gloves.ed tachyon emission visualizered to THE RIGHT TO REMAIN…G

  Furry brown gloves, that moved.

  Babies.

  Chickula babies.

  Thousands of them, scurrying up my arms.

  The drain was their nursery.

  I beat my hands together, indulging in some warranted, high-pitching screaming, and then began to brush the little monsters off me just as their parents sprung out of the foliage to attack.

  The first one landed on my back, hard as a punch, and I immediately flopped onto the ground and fell on top of it. Two more pounced onto my chest and pelvis, as the one under my back—not completel
y crushed—tried to scurry away.

  The creature on my chest hissed at me, mandibles opening wide, its beak clacking and snapping. I made my left hand into a claw and poked five of its six eyes, digging the digits in up to the first knuckle. It leapt away from the attack, soaring through the air, smacking directly into a stiff stalk of bamboo.

  Pinpricks continued to travel up my arms, hundreds of tiny chickulas biting me, and my right hand freed the spork handle and slashed at the bovinsect on my waist just as its mandibles pinched through my shirt. The one beneath me continued to squirm, and I rolled to the right—

  — face-first into the drain.

  For a brief moment, it was like my face was being gently caressed by a super-soft pillow.

  Then the pillow began to bite me.

  I screamed again, baby chickulas swarming into my open mouth, biting my tongue and inner cheeks. I quickly clamped my jaws together, shaking my head side to side, chewing hard, and was somewhat surprised by how good they tasted. Why didn’t fast food places serve the babies? They were a lot like chicken-flavored popcorn, but crunchier and with a bit more salt.

  I reached my free hand down into the darkness, finding the damp bottom of the drainage tube, which, as expected,was large enough for a man to fit inside. I slid through the opening, pulling my whole body after me, scrambling into a few cent

  imeters of water. It was dark. Dark and scary. But the chickula offspring seemed to be biting me less and less—perhaps they were in retreat mode—and I did a double-time low-crawl toward where I guessed the pump to be. I found it by banging into it with my forehead, a metal wire grating covering the hatch. I used my spork to pry off a hinge, pushed the grate back, and then slid under the drainage pump and to a plastic panel. It opened with a palm strike, giving me access to the dry—and chickula free—crawlspace.

  I climbed through, shutting the panel behind me, sweating and heaving and swallowing the tasty remains of the babies still in my mouth. A sliver of light winked at me a few meters to my left, and I pulled myself across the aluminum ceiling and found a duct for the air conditioner. Two kicks and it was detached, allowing me to drop down onto a sofa in Sata’s living room.