by John Hulme
It was a crazy gamble, made less so only by the fact that C-Note and Shan were covertly pressing their fake Health Badges to signal that the time to counterstrike was now. But before anyone could make a move, a strange humming began to filter through the windows, getting louder and louder with each passing second.
“What is that noise?” asked Triton, his voice reflecting the first hint of doubt.
When Lena tried to answer him by leaning even farther out the window, she could’ve sworn that what echoed through the thick and purple clouds surrounding the Big Building sounded like a billion mosquitoes descending from the sky in sneak attack.
Or perhaps a bunch of tiny helicopters.
“Steady, boys!” The Mother of All Glitches put the brakes on her Attak-Pak, then held up all three of her hands. “Nobody strikes until you see the whites of their eyes!”
Swirling about her was a cloud of Glitches at least a thousand strong, each with a propeller extending from the top of their own Paks and over their misshapen heads.
“What’re we waitin’ for, Ma?” shouted Phineas, her eldest. “We can finally pay them back for what they done to us on Clean Sweep!”
The Mother’s answer was to press a button on her handle, activating a mechanical arm that reached out and started washing Phineas’s mouth out with soap.
“Anybody else gives me lip, and nobody gets to trash nothin’!”
Her brood immediately fell silent, dropping their eyes bashfully toward the ground. But as the Mother flew down to where the Glitch in Sleep’s Attak-Pak was struggling to carry three orange jumpsuits through the air, she knew the madness of her children couldn’t be contained for long.
“I’m warnin’ you, Freck. My boys’re gonna tear this place to shreds unless somebody tells them exactly where to go and what to do.”
Thibadeau Freck was the only escapee who had summoned up the courage to take a gander below— Simly Frye and Permin Neverlåethe both had their hands over their eyes and skin the color of peas— but at a height of nearly twenty thousand feet, the Frenchman didn’t quite feel ready to lead the way.
“We must use the 7th Sense, then,” he stammered. “To find where in each department The Tide has taken hold.”
Thib could definitely feel shiverings and quiverings all over his body, not surprising when something was wrong in just about every department in The Seems. The only problem was, Seemsberia hadn’t exactly done wonders for his mastery of a Fixer’s greatest Tool.
“Just give me a moment to focus my—”
“Don’t sweat it, Thib. I’ll handle this one.”
Thibadeau turned to see Simly dangling from a bungee cord just a few feet to his right. The Briefer was already stretching out his arms and reaching his awareness toward the entirety of the campus below.
“But Sim, you are Seemsian. You have no 7th Sense.”
Simly took a look up at his old classmate, and Thibadeau saw a sparkle he’d never seen before in those Coke-bottle glasses-covered eyes.
“Au contraire, Frenchie. Au contraire.”
26. See The Seems: Stories for Another Day. (Coming soon.)
1327
The Unthinkable
When it was all over, and Simly Frye had guided hordes of clinically insane four-inch-tall monstrosities through every tube, air-conditioning duct, and exhaust pipe into The Seems, the Mother of All Glitches fulfilled her promise to Thibadeau by wresting control of The World away from The Tide. Coupled with the devastating counterstrike led by C-Note and Shan, the Big Building was once again under Seemsian control. And though Triton may have slipped away like a phantom, at least the departments and sub-departments that had been gummed up by his agents were immediately back in motion again . . .
All except for one.
Department of Thought & Emotion, The Seems
On the floor of Central Shipping, the conveyor belts had stopped, the hearths had been extinguished, and Think Tanks lay empty on their sides. As the sweat-soaked members of the Brain Trust dejectedly abandoned their posts, the same terrible message cried out over and over again on the loudspeaker . . .
“Warning! The Unthinkable is happening! The Unthinkable is happening! Warning!”
Most of the staff were gathering around a single Window on The World, where Eve Hightower was monitoring the rapidly deteriorating situation herself. The Second in Command had come down to T&E to personally supervise the allotments of Idle Thought, but since the final stack of chips had gone out twenty minutes ago, there was little she or anyone else could do now but watch in abject horror.
“If anyone has a suggestion, please speak up.” Eve’s eyes were streaked red, and she had never felt so tired in her life. “’Cause I’m all out of Big Ideas.”
“So are we, ma’am.” A brokenhearted Mind Blower held up a stamped bill of lading. “We tried sending the last one to Oxford—thought maybe the physicists there could use it to figure out what was happening, but—”
The Blower burst into tears before he could finish his sentence, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
Onscreen, enraged students were clashing with cops on the streets of downtown Tokyo. Six miles worth of bumper-to-bumper traffic spilled road rage across Rio de Janeiro. And worst of all, in a heavily fortified sub-basement of the White House, the president of the United States was staring angrily at a big red button and trying to think of one good reason why he shouldn’t just go ahead and push it.
“I don’t understand why we’re letting this happen, Madame Second.” The Foreman of T&E was a grizzled old vet of the Color Wars, and it was killing him that everything he’d fought for was about to go up in flames. “Can’t we just stop Time for a few weeks until we get a new batch of Thought from Contemplation?”
Eve shook her head, crushed by an overwhelming sense of defeat.
“I wish we could, but the Rules are very clear in this matter. No matter how much it hurts, we can’t interfere with the—”
“Forgive me for saying this, ma’am . . . but damn the Rules!”
The Foreman’s voice was so thick with emotion that he could barely say what he knew he had to say.
“And damn the freakin’ Plan.”
Eve slowly looked up at him, then back at the rest of the T&E crew who crowded close behind her. She knew without question that they were loyal and dedicated employees whose greatest mission in life was to create the most magical World possible, which only made the doubt on their faces that much harder to stomach. She also knew it was a perfect reflection of her own.
“I . . .”
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
Her Bleceiver began to vibrate, and when she quietly lifted it to her ear, Eve was surprised to hear her injured assistant on the other end of the line.
“Excuse me, ma’am . . . but someone just made an emergency breakthrough on your personal Calling Card.”
“Who is it, Monique?”
“The signal’s pretty weak, so I can’t quite make out who’s calling . . .”
Despite her minor concussion, Monique’s excitement jumped right through the phone.
“But I think it’s Fixer Drane.”
The Middle of Nowhere
Becker was sorely disappointed when he pulled the short end of the Stick and got stuck behind the engineer’s wheel. Nothing would’ve made him happier than to crunch a few Nowherian skulls after all the trouble they’d caused, but unfortunately, Trains of Thought don’t come with an autopilot. Someone had to operate the throttle at all times while simultaneously keeping the Johnson Bar in the front position and stoking the boiler every so often with another shovelful of coal. Not exactly a one-Fixer job either, but since there was only one left to do it . . .
“. . . Repeat, am currently fifteen clicks west of the End of the Line, with 80 percent payload on my back!” Becker was barking into Fixer Blaque’s battery-operated Calling Card, trying to make himself heard over the engine and wind. “With any L.U.C.K., I’ll be rolling into T&E in less than twelve hours!”
Her tone of voice told Becker it was anything but.
“What’s wrong, Madame Second?”
“It’s just . . . we were forced to expend a tremendous amount of resources last night, including our last bit of Idle Thought.”
Becker kept his eyes focused on the gauges, afraid to even ask. “The Unthinkable?”
“Already happening. And worse than we ever imagined.” Her image schitzed out of view for a second, but her voice could still be heard. “I had my Senior Case Workers crunch the numbers, and these are the projections.”
When the Second in Command popped back into view, she was reading from a printout in an almost mechanical voice.
“In approximately thirty-seven minutes: first bombs fall upon Indian subcontinent. Forty-two minutes, cities of Hong Kong, Jerusalem, and Washington, District of Columbia, engulfed in flames. At one-hour mark, estimate . . .” Eve coughed, finding it hard to say the words. “10.3 million people dead.”
Becker found it even harder to hear them, relying upon professionalism to keep himself from totally wigging out. “What are our options, Madame?”
“To be honest . . . I’m seriously considering putting The World on hold.”
“You can’t do that!” Becker gripped the Johnson Bar so tight his knuckles went right past white to blue. “There’s only a one in three chance it’ll start up again—at best! And we could end up having to rebuild the whole thing from Scratch!”
“One in three is better than no chance at all! So, Plan help me, Fixer Drane, unless you have the Solution to All Our Problems™ on that train or in your brain, I’m gonna do what needs to be done!”
With his own supplies of Thought undoubtedly dwindling, it was hard for Becker to keep his Emotions under control. He focused on his breathing for a few seconds, then tried to remember that on at least a half-dozen Missions, he’d arrived at this exact same moment, when all seemed lost and there was nowhere left to turn. Yes, he’d already used his Glimmer of Hope. Sure, his Ace in the Hole™ was back in the Nowherian village with his Toolkit. And by all means, his 7th Sense was useless out here, but there had to be a way to Fix this thing. There had to be a way to get this train’s cargo across to The World before—
“The In-Betweener!”
“Excuse me?” asked Eve Hightower, not quite sure if she’d heard her Fixer correctly, but Becker was too busy tearing through the box of maps the conductor had stashed beside his chair to repeat himself. The documents were crumpled and riddled with Pickmeup cup stains, so it took a few anxious moments to find one that was old enough to feature the Pre-Seemsiana Purchase layout. Back then there had been all sorts of cool departments that were no longer in service.
And all sorts of train lines.
“What about the In-Betweener, Fixer Drane?”
“I can use it to deliver the Thought.”
“You must be joking.”
“I saw an old, boarded-up tunnel when we were out at Contemplation, and I can be there in less than twenty.” Becker checked the mileage on the map against the speedometer on the train to make sure his calculations were correct. “All I need is someone to throw the switch at the End of the Line and kick me over to the right set of rails.”
The Second in Command’s silence said she was doing some calculating of her own.
“Even if you don’t totally derail, and even if the In-Betweener tube hasn’t caved in, how are you planning to get the Thought off the train? There’s no staff out there except for a handful of Provokers. It’ll take you hours to unload it . . .”
Becker Drane gritted his teeth and pushed the throttle even farther.
“I’m not planning on unloading it.”
For the intrepid handful who’ve been lucky enough to make the leap across the In-Between, there is nothing quite like the feeling of being propelled at inconceivable speeds down an electrified Transport Tube. But back before this technology was invented, the Department of Transportation relied upon a different method of delivering Goods & Services to the newly operational World. Instead of being shipped via magnetic suction, the wares of Nature and Energy and Sleep were piled atop pallets and delivered by an automated freight train line.
They called it “the In-Betweener.”
“Just get as many boards off that tunnel as you can, all right?” shouted Becker into the locomotive’s built-in Receiver.
“We’re trying, sir, but there’s only five of us out here! Most of our best people have been missing since that train went lost.”
Now that he’d left the Middle of Nowhere and turned the train toward Contemplation without derailing (barely), Becker’s lines of communication had opened up. He was trying to get a small crew of Thought Provokers to give his lunatic plan a chance of working, but it was easier said than done.
“Just make sure everybody’s outta the way in about ten minutes.” Becker’s Time Piece was happily working again. “’Cause I’ll be seeing you in eleven.”
Becker hung up, then ran a spot check of all the details. Speed? Check. Boiler pressure? Check. Way to maintain enough velocity for the Train of Thought to smash through the boarded-up old In-Betweener entrance at Contemplation, make it all the way across the In-Between without derailing, and still get the driver off the train alive? Not so check.
“Fixer Drane, come in, over.”
It was the Second in Command on the Calling Card again, and Becker pressed the green “answer” button with his right foot.
“The Transpo guys have done the math, and if you hit the tunnel entrance at your current speed, momentum should carry the train all the way across the In-Between whether it slips off the rails or not.”
“What about the Tube? Won’t it shatter from the weight?”
“Transpo swears it’s good to go.”
“Then, um . . . what’s the problem?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Fixer Drane. I think you knew the moment you came up with this idea.”
Eve Hightower hadn’t risen to the most powerful position in The Seems because she was dumb, and even if she had been, the singular flaw in Becker’s World-rescuing scheme was obvious. In-Betweener freights had been designed to deliver the payloads automatically, without drivers, and thus, they didn’t come with locomotives on the front. And locomotives were way too tall to fit through the tunnel that Becker was heading straight for.
“The engineer’s cabin will be sheared off the minute you hit that entrance.”
“Don’t worry about me, Madame. I’ll figure out some way off.”
“I thought you said you lost your Toolkit.”
“I did. But Fixer Blaque always said, ‘A true Fixer never blames his Tools.’”
“Becker—”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Madame Second, but I just wanna make sure all the i’s are crossed and t’s are dotted before I focus on my rip cord strategy.”
Eve nodded and quickly confirmed that all of Becker’s suggestions for how to maximize the potential Fix had been carried out. The Department of Transportation was ready to calculate the train’s moment of impact with the Fabric of Reality to the millisecond. The Department of Reality would ensure that the train itself would disintegrate, while Time would be stopped Worldwide for thirty seconds, so people’s heads wouldn’t explode from the sudden rush of Thought and Big Ideas.
“I think that’s everything, Madame.”
The image of Eve Hightower nodded and seemed to lean sadly against the console of the train. “You don’t have to do this, Fixer Drane.”
“Then who will?”
Becker kept his hand on the throttle, his eyes focused on the parallel lines of steel that disappeared beneath him.
“But if I, um . . .”
This time it was Becker who struggled to find the words, and Eve to hear t
hem.
“Anything.”
“I want you to carry out my sentence to the full letter of the law.” Becker worked up the courage to look her in the eyes. “Unremember Jennifer Kaley and my brother.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s gonna be hard enough on Benjamin if my Me-2 has to decommission itself.”
“Understood.”
“But before you unremember Jenny, I was working on this mix for her and I was hoping that . . . before I . . .”
“You want her to hear it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Me-2 knows where it is.”
“Done.” Eve motioned toward someone not in her Calling Card’s view. “Anything else?”
“Maybe put a call in to Henry Steele over at L.U.C.K., see if there’s any he can throw my way.”
“One step ahead of you. Steele says he’ll be waiting for you at Flip’s—burgers on him.”
“All right, then. I better get going.”
“Jayson would’ve been proud of you, Becker. Plan knows I am.”
“Thanks, Madame Second. That means a ton.”
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes to celebrate.”
With a smile on her digitally projected face that said she might’ve even believed that, Eve Hightower hung up.
Four minutes to go . . . make that three minutes and fifty-eight seconds of driving a hundred miles an hour straight toward what amounted to a brick wall. The moment he let go of the throttle that speed would drop precipitously, which meant he needed to hold on to it until about fifteen seconds prior to impact. Not a lot of time for a rip cord strategy, even if he had one.
It would take only three seconds to dive out the side door of the cabin, but there was nothing inside the locomotive he could use to cushion his fall. No, a better bet was to head for the roof. Maybe six seconds to climb the ladder, four to sprint back to the car behind him, nine to cut off the tarpaulin that he was almost positive had been draped over the carload of Thought, six more to pull it tightly into the form of a parachute, and no more than two to dive over the side, where he would float gently and safely to the ground. Of course, that all added up to a minimum of twenty-seven seconds, but who was counting?