“Howdy, partner,” said Nobody.
“Partner,” said the man in the shadows, with a nod of his head.
“Wait a second… you heard me,” said Nobody, scratching his head.
“Hear you, see you. Smell you from over here. You drinking that stuff or just wallowing in it?”
“Wallowing mostly,” said Nobody, sighing. “Wallowing in booze and misery. How come you can hear me? Wait, don’t tell me, I’ve drunk myself dead. You’re the devil, come for me at last.”
“Good guess,” said the stranger. He stepped forward, into the dim light of the single candle Nobody had lit on the bar.
“Well, well, well,” said Nobody, recognizing his guest. “If it ain’t my old buddy Dr. Know.”
“It ain’t,” said Dr. Know, sitting down next to him. He looked different somehow. His hair was longer, his face was thinner, and he was wearing blue jeans and a black leather jacket. But what was really different, Nobody realized, was the way he carried himself, loose and relaxed. He looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Doc, I gotta admit, I never thought I’d see you again.”
“You aren’t seeing me again,” said Doctor Know. “This is our first meeting.”
“Holy crap,” said Nobody, his eyes widening. “You’ve done messed things up with your time machine again. Jesus Christ. When I go outside, I’m going to find a world run by apes, aren’t I?”
“The world’s been run by apes for quite a while now,” said Dr. Know.
“So,” said Nobody. “I guess you’re feeling pretty smug these days, huh? Looks like the world’s starting to get its act together. Everybody rallying together in defense of Earth. And I saw in the paper that Hong Kong’s decided to build one of your dome thingies. Guess everything’s going according to plan.”
“So it would seem,” said Dr. Know. “But not my plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I would never cage in humanity beneath plastic skies. I would never subvert the liberties of people, forcing them to live under an authoritarian scheme managed by a shadow king only a handful of elites even know exists. All my life I’ve fought for free will, free skies, and free love. By the way, I gotta admit I admire you. Boffing both the Thrill and Rail Blade. Sweet.”
“You sick fuck,” said Nobody. “No wonder they both hate you.”
“They hate me because they’ve been trained to hate me. But I think you’re trying to imply that they hate their father. You still haven’t figured out who I am, have you?”
“You’re Dr. Know,” said Nobody. “What, you having an identity crisis or something?”
“I know exactly who I am,” he answered. “I’m Nikolas Knowbokov.
“A.K.A. Dr. Know,” said Nobody.
“A.K.A. Rex Monday.”
Nobody stared at the man next to him. He reached for the whiskey, and took a sip.
“I’m a little drunk,” Nobody admitted. “So maybe I’m not catching this. You mean all this time, you’ve been Rex Monday?”
“Yep. I’ve been Rex Monday. But I haven’t been Dr. Know.”
Nobody lowered his head and shook it. “Who’s on first,” he mumbled.
“So I’ve heard,” said Rex Monday.
“And Dr. Know and Rex Monday are the same person,” said Nobody.
“No, not really.”
“You are one mean bastard, messing with me while I’m this drunk.”
“I’m a mean bastard most of the time. I have a lot of things to feel mean about. Like the fact that the world is presently being run by my goddamn evil twin and I’m starting to think he’s actually going to get away with it.”
“Evil twin,” said Nobody, chuckling. Why hadn’t he thought of that? It seemed so obvious now. He nodded slowly, and said it again. “Evil twin.”
“I like to think of him as such, yes.”
“My head hurts.”
“Did he tell you he destroyed the universe in 1968?”
“Yeah.”
“He lied,” said Monday, tapping his chest. “I destroyed the universe in 1968. I was the one whose mind provided the template for its re-genesis. I imagined myself in the world, and so someone very much like myself filled that role. But I was still outside. I wasn’t the cat in the box, I was still the one who had opened the box. I watched, ghostlike, in horror as someone who looked, sounded, and seemingly thought just like me carried on with what should have been my life. And for years, that was all I could do. Watch, while he gathered up wealth and power, watch while he fucked my wife and fathered her children. I hated him. I despised him. And I swore that one day I would kill him.”
“I’ve either drunk too much or not nearly enough,” said Nobody. “I believe every word you just said.”
“On December 16, 1974, I broke back through. It was as if my hatred for him built up to a point that it twisted the very fabric of reality, tearing a hole. I stepped through, and found myself real once more. I was naked, starving, cold, and lost. On one side of the hole I had been watching him play with his baby daughter. When I stepped through the hole to strangle him, I was on a snowy tundra, with no one around. I willed myself to walk for three days before I found a small cabin, inhabited by a wild-eyed, shaggy-bearded recluse. He pulled a shotgun on me and told me to get off his property. I informed him this was my planet, tore the gun from his grasp, and beat him to death with it. I took his clothes. I ate his flesh. I stayed in his cabin for three weeks while I figured out what to do.”
“You ate his flesh…?”
“Don’t judge me. You can’t imagine the state of mind I was in, after being trapped so long outside of reality”
“I can imagine better than you might think.”
“Perhaps you can. During my stay in the cabin, I realized how much Dr. Know had the upper hand. He was the one with the wealth and the power. He was the one with the ability to read minds. I thought of confronting him directly, but feared the consequences. I think he is the anti-matter to my matter… should we ever meet, I believe it will destroy us both. His life I wouldn’t mourn, but my death would be just one goddamn bummer.”
“I hear ya.”
“But, eventually, I learned I had special abilities of my own. I couldn’t read minds, but I could close them off, prevent him from reading them. I began to father children, and was pleased to learn they displayed strange powers and abilities, just as his did.”
“The Panic and Sundancer I can see,” said Nobody “But Pit Geek was, like, fifty”
“I can’t explain Pit Geek. I just sort of found him, and worked him into my little army. For years, I’ve worked behind the scenes in opposition to my dark half’s sinister schemes. Where he tried to oppress indigenous people beneath the thumbs of colonial invaders, I provided the arms to fan the flames of revolution. Where he tried to disarm those nations that might oppose him, I worked to keep them one step ahead on chemical and biological weapons. But now, it seems my hard work and dedication are coming to naught. With the destruction of Jerusalem, he seems to have stoked the fears of the world sufficiently to provide the leverage he needs to carry out his mad plans.”
“Dude,” said Nobody. “You can’t really think you were doing the right thing by starting wars, can you?”
“I wasn’t starting wars. I was just trying to ensure they run their natural course. Where natural hostilities are repressed by outside forces, the hate festers and grows until the war that finally comes when the outside forces vanish is far worse than what would have come before. The lessons of history are harsh, but irrefutable. True peace only comes when one side becomes powerful enough that the other side is no longer a threat. Then guilt sets in, the side with the power throws the side that lost a few crumbs, and all is right with the world. That’s how the west was won.”
“Forget the forces of history,” said Nobody, feeling increasingly sober. “You were going to blow up school buses filled with children.”
“Hard choices must be m
ade when fighting a foe as powerful and nearly omniscient as Dr. Know. I can’t pretend I’m proud of the things I’ve done. But perhaps you can understand a little of the desperation and fear I felt, knowing that every lie on the evening news bore the stamp of his plotting.”
“Well,” said Nobody. “He’s no saint, that’s for sure.”
“I want you to help me stop him,” said Monday.
“How?”
“I’m thinking a bullet in the head will do the trick. His island is wired. If one of my agents stepped foot on the sand there he would know it. But you’ve been there as his guest. You could still get close enough to deliver a fatal blow.”
“Rex, if I may call you Rex . . .”
“Feel free.”
“Rex, go screw yourself. I’m not a murderer.”
“You killed Baby Gun, my own flesh and blood. I know you’re capable of murder.”
“Baby Gun was kind of stomping through Jerusalem at the time, under your orders, and innocent people were getting hurt.”
“You didn’t kill Rail Blade when she was polishing off Jerusalem.”
“Because of you,” said Nobody, stabbing a finger toward Monday’s chest, “Veronica’s dead.”
“An unfortunate misunderstanding. I wanted them to use her to contact you. There was never an order from me to harm her.”
“Just get away from me,” said Nobody, throwing up his hands. “Jesus, you’re both a couple of sick bastards.”
“You could still have her back, you know,” said Monday.
“Who?”
“Veronica. Once you kill Dr. Know, we’ll have access to his time machine.”
“You’re freaking crazy.”
“You could go back in time and kill Dr. Know just before he leaves on the trip that led to your present condition.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Nobody. “I’ve watched Star Trek. If I go back in time and kill him, then I would never even meet him, which means I’d never have a reason to kill him. Oh, Jesus, that kind of stuff makes my head hurt. Or maybe it’s mixing all this liquor.”
Rex Monday grabbed a bar napkin and took out a pen. He drew a line to the midpoint of the napkin, then looped the line into a circle, returning to the line once more, continuing on straight, so that he’d drawn a circle intersecting a line at one point only.
“This is your time line,” said Monday.
“And this is your time line on drugs,” said Nobody.
“Follow me,” said Monday. “This line veers off into a circle, but returns to continue its path. The same would be true of your personal timeline. All the events that would have occurred in your life since the morning you woke up unborn would still exist, here, in this loop. The existence of the line isn’t disturbed by the existence of the loop. You would wake up in bed, next to your wife, with full memory of everything that happened. But your life would be normal again. You’d be free of this strange curse.”
“But Dr. Know would be alive again.”
“In your timeline, sure. Not in mine. I’d finally have what I want most.”
“I think this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. No. No. I mean, everything would be back? Like it was? Oh, forget it. I’m not going to kill him. You’re more deserving of a bullet in the head than he is.”
“Maybe you’d give me a chance to change your mind.”
“I can’t think of a damn thing you could say to change my mind.”
“There are things I could show you,” said Monday. “Let’s take a little trip.”
Nobody opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The bar vanished.
Chapter Twenty
Talking About Weather
Once more, there was no up. Nobody watched with nauseated fascination as his body fractured and folded, smearing out over numerous flat and fragmented dimensions.
When he snapped back into a cohesive whole, he dropped to his hands and knees on rock-hard frozen ground, and retched.
“Yeah,” said Rex Monday, watching. “I thought it would be best not to take you directly inside.”
“Aauugh,” moaned Nobody, drool dripping from his lips. “Oooh, Christ. Give me some warning next time you… you… you do whatever the hell it is you just did.”
“Dr. Know built a time machine,” said Monday. “I built a space machine.”
“Space machine?”
“Some of my less-educated colleagues insist on calling it a teleporter. But a teleporter would imply the transition of matter into information into matter again. Possible I suppose, but only with absurd levels of computing power and raw energy. My machine exploits the fractal math that underlies the fabric of space, allowing the spontaneous transposition of points along a curve. I built it out of a pocket calculator and a microwave oven. Simple and obvious, at least if you were there to watch the Big Bang.”
“Nothing absurd about that,” said Nobody, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The cold wind made him aware of the beads of sweat dripping down his face. “Oh, God, I don’t feel so good.”
“Come inside,” said Monday, motioning toward a small, crude cabin nearby. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
By his second cup of coffee, the aspirin Rex Monday had given him started to kick in. Nobody still felt like he was going to die, but he no longer craved the relief death would bring the way he had earlier.
Monday stood by the cabin’s single small window, watching the sunrise. The cabin was lit by oil lamps, and the coffee pot was still simmering on the wood stove. The cabin was one large room, with a single, small cot, a small table made from an upturned barrel, two folding chairs and a very out of place metal and glass office desk, on top of which was a laptop computer.
“Beautiful morning,” said Monday. “Pink sky. Might be a storm on the way later. Last big storm we had, snow got higher than the roof.”
“You didn’t bring me here to talk about the weather,” said Nobody.
“Didn’t I? I like talking about weather. Weather is uncontrollable, unpredictable, something big that gives man a little philosophical perspective.”
Nobody rubbed his temples. “Sorry, but I’m not really in the mood to discuss philosophy.”
“We’re not talking philosophy. We’re talking about weather.”
“My bad.”
“Dr. Know threatens this, you know.”
“What? Weather?”
“You been to D.C. since they finished the dome?”
“Briefly,” said Nobody.
“It’s always the same now. It’s always seventy degrees. There’s fake rain three times a week to keep the trees growing, and wind on demand to keep the air fresh. In D.C. now, talk about weather is a thing of the past. They’ve done something about it.”
“Sure. But, really, is it any different than this cabin? I doubt you like weather enough to keep the door and window open during snowstorms. Just think of the D.C. Dome as a great big cabin.”
Monday nodded and took a sip of his coffee. After a pause, he said, “He can stop hurricanes, you know.”
Nobody nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, now that you mention it, I heard that.”
“He’s trying not to abuse it. But the temptation must always be there. I know how he thinks. He thinks like I used to think. He can save lives and property by stopping hurricanes. Of course, hurricanes play important ecological roles in the grand scheme of things. So, he’ll look for ways to create new hurricanes, ones he’ll control, that stay below dangerous levels, and make landfall where he thinks they’re most needed. He’s already running tests.”
“How do you know that?”
Monday sat down at the desk and powered up the laptop. “Remember, I spent years as a ghost, just like you are now. I was able to watch him while he was putting together his laboratory in his mansion. He’s made some significant upgrades to his systems over the years, but underneath it all, he’s still running slapped-together code he jammed out way back when. Getting into his systems is a breeze. That’s how I found out about you
r existence. I was listening in on your encrypted radio transmissions.”
Nobody thought of something that struck him as important. “You built that hood the Panic was wearing. The one that let him see me.”
“Yes. I had worked out the design in my head ages ago when I was trapped outside of reality”
“You could build more for me.”
“Don’t need to,” said Monday, pulling open the center desk drawer. He pulled out another hood, and tossed it to Nobody “My compliments.”
“This will let anyone see me?”
“Yes.”
Nobody held the hood, running his fingers across the fine mesh, imagining the possibilities. For the briefest instant, he imagined himself leading a normal life again. But, of course, that was absurd. The hood would only let one person at a time see him. It was unlikely he would be able to convince six billion people to wear hoods all the time just so he’d be real once more. If anything, holding the hood made his situation seem more hopeless than ever.
“Look at this,” said Monday, tapping the laptop screen. “I can get into all of his files from here. I can pull up information on his weather control experiments. I can pull up live feeds of his agents who are negotiating with cities around the world to put up domes. His goal is to have two-thirds of the Earth’s population under artificial skies by the year 2050. And even that is just the midpoint of his plan. Eventually, he plans to build floating super-cities in the middle of the ocean. He’s designed them to comfortably support ten billion people.”
“That’s quite a crowd.”
“Most of the time the citizens will be stacked up like firewood, existing in life-supporting wombs, participating in a virtual reality. This is his ultimate plan to save the Earth. Hitler had a final solution, and so does Dr. Know. By 2150, he intends for the continents to be devoid of permanent human habitation. Then he will begin to reforest and repopulate the vanished species of Earth.”
He tapped some keys. A list of endangered species began to scroll up, a very, very long list.
“He’s got a gene bank containing all these species, and is pretty far along in developing the process he’ll need to clone them.”
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