That made a lot of sense. It protected the timeline.
Then I thought about it. She had just planted the plan to rescue us in Stan’s mind to carry for over eleven thousand years while he was in the middle of rescuing us. Have I ever said how much time travel gives me a headache?
“We need to get out of here,” she said.
“Hold on, we have two residents of Patty’s building with us,” I said.
I nodded to the two paramedics to be ready and then instantly brought the two unconscious women to the front room. The two paramedics expertly caught the two women and held them like they did something like that every day.
“Got everyone now?” Laverne asked.
I nodded and took Patty’s hand, feeling her calming influence on me.
Laverne turned to the white-bearded man who seemed to just be standing there smiling slightly as he watched like a grandfather pleased at the actions of his grandchildren.
“A ride home if you wouldn’t mind, Burtram?” she asked.
Burtram Chronos? I was never getting that out of my mind.
He smiled and waved his hand.
Without even seeming to move, we were standing in front of the booth in my office that hovered over the Las Vegas Strip.
Laverne and Chronos were gone.
Stan was no longer with us either, more than likely with his daughters. I had a hunch we weren’t going to be seeing him much for a time.
Around us the wonderful city of Las Vegas spread out across the desert. The sky was perfect blue, the desert perfect brown, and the planes were filling the sky on approaches to the airport. Below I could see the moving traffic and lights of The Strip.
It felt wonderful to be home.
Part of me had believed I would never see it again. Actually a very large part.
Ben and Madge were both sitting in the booth, sweating as if they had been running.
“Oh, thank heavens you are back,” Ben said. “We couldn’t hold this office up much longer.”
I frowned and figured I would have them explain that later. It didn’t feel like I was suddenly holding up the office.
Patty kissed me and then let go of my hand.
“Patty’s building safe?” I asked Ben.
He nodded, using a napkin to wipe the sweat off his brow as Madge slid out of the booth and sort of staggered for the door to The Diner. “I’ll get some milkshakes and fries started.”
“I’ll jump you two into the back area of the lobby,” I said, turning to the two paramedics who were still holding up the two unconscious women residents. “From there you can get these two to the hospital.”
They both nodded and I jumped them to the empty main floor of the building, thanked them for their help, and jumped back to my office.
It felt wonderful to be home.
Just wonderful.
Screamer was pulling a chair up to the booth and Patty had already slid into the side across from Ben.
“Go get Sherri,” I said to Screamer as I slid into the big booth beside Patty. “Have her join us for a late lunch so we have someone to tell this story to.”
He started to open his mouth, then remembered he could teleport and broke into a huge smile.
“Right back,” he said, and vanished.
“Very good job today,” Ben said, nodding and sipping on a glass of water in front of him. “You all saved a lot of people in a lot of timelines. How did you like Atlantis?”
“Seemed pretty advanced,” I said. “But we didn’t luckily see much of it.”
“How are the Atlantis Fifty going to be?” Patty asked.
“The Atlantis what?” Sherri asked as she appeared with Screamer and slid into the booth as Ben slid over. “And someone want to explain to me how my husband can now teleport?”
“The Atlantis Fifty,” Ben said. “They were before your time.”
“Considerably,” Sherri said. “If they were actually from Atlantis. I’m not that old, thank you very much.”
“But we were there today,” Screamer said, smiling at his wife.
“Where?” Sherrie asked, looking very puzzled.
“Atlantis,” Screamer said. “Nice place, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I hear it had flooding problems.”
Sherri opened her mouth, staring at her husband, then shut it and looked at me.
Patty and I both laughed.
Patty finally took pity on Sherri and looked at me. “How about we start from the beginning and tell her about our day.”
“Should I start with the shower part?” I asked, remembering how wonderful she looked there, naked and not moving, covered in drops of water. “With you frozen in the shower and me just staring.”
“Pervert,” Patty said and smacked me on the shoulder and Ben smiled like he did when amused.
“After the shower,” Patty said.
“Oh, bummer,” Screamer said.
And with that the laughter drained away the last of the tension I was feeling.
It was wonderful to be home, wonderful to have stopped a horrid tragedy from happening, and wonderful to be back in this time.
And even though thousands of years before in Atlantis, fifty families had been torn apart with a horrid tragedy, the Atlantis Fifty had now found a new home. They were safe and would get the help they needed.
And Stan had two daughters back he thought he’d lost forever.
All in all, I figured it was a good Saturday afternoon.
Can romance be real between two androids on a poison planet with beach sand in all the wrong places?
Dr. Susan Taft discovers the answer to that question when her ship crashes in the middle of a lake in a very hostile place.
The only thing not hostile: Another android with her.
An Android with a great body and an even better mind.
DON’T RUST ON ME NOW
The alarm bells were going off as I came up out of transwarp sleep, trying to remember where I was. Who I was, actually.
Oh, yeah, Susan Taft. Dr. Susan Taft, actually; originally from Canada on Earth, recently from the Mars city of Bensen.
I remembered now. Waking up from transwarp sleep was supposed to be calm and comfortable, like waking up from a long nap. Yeah, alarms blaring can really help a person be calm.
Damn I hated alarms.
The one echoing around me had a distinctive whoop-whoop screaming sound that I was sure could hurt a person’s ears given time. What was going on?
And why didn’t someone shut off the stupid alarm? And let me out of this sleep chamber. I didn’t want to open my eyes because I knew there was nothing but padding about five inches above my face.
Everyone says that the human brain doesn’t dream in transwarp sleep, but I’d had this uncomfortable dream about losing my body in an industrial accident, and having my mind temporarily put into an android body so I could make the journey to New Wells a couple of hundred light years away for a new and younger and healthier body.
On New Wells they grew the human replacement bodies tall, strong, and pretty in the organ beds in the light gravity. Anything would be better than the old, scarred-up and dying original body from my dream. I remember dreaming that I had ordered larger breasts as well, just to spend one life rotation seeing if the things might change my life in any way.
Then the dream firmed up and became a nasty memory, and I remembered.
No dream. I really was scarred up by an accident and I had really ordered new and larger breasts on my body replacement. Yeah, that was dumb.
And I really was in an android body right now.
Damn. I didn’t want to open my eyes.
But I sure did want to shout for someone to turn off the stupid alarm. It seemed to be vibrating my sleep coffin. Even if I were dead, that sound would wake me up.
I sure hoped I wasn’t dead.
I had come too close to that totally dead state in the accident back on Mars. I had plans to stay around for another ten body rotations—a good four hundre
d Earth years—if I stayed away from having a machine explode ten feet from me again.
The android body I was in had all the normal human shapes and bumps and curves and even the larger breasts I had ordered. It was a replica in every detail of the new body I had ordered that was waiting for me on New Wells.
The android body even functioned in all ways like a normal human body, right down to eating and drinking and other body functions. It even had soft, smooth skin over the metal alloy frame.
Only that soft-looking skin was a patchwork quilt of browns and whites, making me look more like an old movie monster that had been stitched together by an insane quilter.
Stupid Earth law. Any android with a human brain had to remain naked at all times and wear a patchwork-colored skin until the brain was transferred into a new human body.
Fear-based law. Politicians never seemed to understand anything about how androids worked. Androids were actually easier to disable than human bodies if you knew what you were doing, and they didn’t last long at all because of the complexity of the systems inside.
A dumb law. I sure didn’t much care to walk around naked. But with my new breasts I had gotten some nice stares while boarding from the Mars station crew.
I moved my hands and felt my android skin along the sides of my legs.
Seemed like everything was working.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hated alarms?
No one seemed to be turning off the alarm. This sure wasn’t a peaceful wake-up from a long transwarp nap.
I had been told to just lay very still when coming out of transwarp sleep, but if someone didn’t shut that alarm off I was going to be anything but still in a few seconds.
Back when I was a student working on my first doctorate in physics, I had used an alarm that sounded like a cross between a fire engine and a ride at Mars Disney just to make sure I got out of bed on time every day.
I kept smashing the alarms and replacing them. Cost me a very satisfactory three hundred extra credits during the term. Worth every damn credit.
If that alarm didn’t get shut off, some part of this ship was going to be smashed in very short order.
Suddenly I could hear the lid of my chamber start to move. I opened my eyes.
Above me stood a very, very handsome, well-built, and very naked male android. I thought I was the only android transport on this ship. Clearly I hadn’t been.
As he pushed the lid back and clicked it into place, his very personal, very male parts dangled just inches from my face. Now that also wasn’t a restful way to wake up.
Nice, but clearly not restful.
“Dr. Taft?” he asked, staring down at me. His gaze first looked relieved as I nodded, but then he looked down the rest of my naked body and the part closest to my face twitched.
“That’s me,” I said, pushing myself up slowly as he stepped back. “What’s going on? Where is the crew?”
He reached down and somehow managed to get his hands under my arms without touching my breasts and help me out of my sleep coffin.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, as I stood, leaning against the smooth metal of my coffin until my balance returned and the room slowly stopped spinning. “I haven’t left the room yet.”
There was another sleep coffin across from mine. It hadn’t been there when they had put me to sleep.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Hugh Bensen,” he said, smiling a smile that could knock down a dead woman, let alone an android with a human brain. I stared so long at his wonderful smile and his deep eyes that it took a moment for the name to register.
“Bensen of the Mars, Bensen City family?” I asked.
“Yup,” he said, “Only son of the current mayor.”
“So why the android?” I asked. “I seem to remember you were only into your second human cycle.
He laughed, and the laugh made me want to just hug him like a big patchwork teddy bear. “Fell off a cliff while doing some climbing up north of the city. Broke my back in three places. Lower gravity can hurt just as much as Earth gravity.”
His voice also seemed perfect to my ears, even with the alarm blaring in the background.
“Great to meet you,” I said.
“The honor is mine,” he said. “I’ve been a big fan of your work since your first paper on the reality of dark space around dark matter.”
Now I really stopped and actually looked at him. A rich guy with a brain and a nice voice and a fantastic body. Was that possible?
“Thank you,” I said, smiling and staring into his eyes just a fraction of a second too long. God, I hoped android skin didn’t blush. More than likely it did.
“Let’s find out what’s going on,” he said, turning from me and heading for the door.
Damn, he had a nice butt as well. There had to be something wrong with this guy besides the patchwork android skin which would soon be changed for a human body when we got to New Wells.
I followed him as he opened the metal door and stepped into the hallway. He took two steps and glanced down; as did I.
We were standing in about an inch of water.
“This can’t be good,” he said, a hint of slight panic in his voice.
I didn’t say anything, because the panic would no doubt be very real and clear in my words.
Water didn’t belong on spaceships past a toilet or a shower or a glass of the stuff in the dining hall. I sure hoped this was just a sink overflowing somewhere.
His pace down the hall got faster and faster as we headed forward. The small transwarp ship was a private craft that the University had chartered to get me to New Wells. It only had a crew of four. Small ships and short, twenty-day jumps didn’t need any more than that.
So where was the crew?
As we headed toward the bridge, the water got deeper, until, in front of the bridge door, it was knee-deep. And the damn alarm got louder and louder.
I hated alarms, sure, but not as much as a flooded spaceship.
The water smelled a lot like a lake I had grown up near in Canada. Not sour, just fresh and clear and wild. Not the slightly sterile, recycled smell of water on Mars.
Hugh pushed open the bridge door slowly, sending a wave of water across the control room.
“Oh, no,” he said softly.
“Damn,” I said, not really believing what I was seeing.
All four crew members were in their chairs and clearly dead. The front of the ship was mostly missing and the ship was nose-down and stuck in a shallow lake.
The light outside was soft, shining through high, white clouds. The air smelled slightly of almonds. I could see some sharp mountains in the distance.
The ship didn’t seem to be sinking at all, so clearly the lake wasn’t very deep, at least where the ship had crashed.
Hugh paused for a moment beside me, then went to the closest crew member and looked at him.
“Can you tell what killed them?” I asked, moving to stand over the captain I had met right before being put in my sleep coffin. Besides a nasty bump on the head and some saliva running out of his mouth and down his chin, he looked all right. But I had no training at all on the medical side of things.
“The air is poison,” Hugh said, heading for a control panel that looked to be functioning. “We survived the impact and can breath the air because of our sleep coffins and these bodies.”
I nodded. That made sense. Android bodies could actually survive in deep space for a short time without suits. Breathing was only an artificial function built in to keep the human mind inside from panic. Actually, everything about an android body was designed to react and let the brain inside feel it was actually still in a human body. I had learned that much a long time ago, long before my accident.
I moved to a blinking light and slammed my hand on the alarm controls to turn them off.
Silence, almost louder than the alarm itself, filled the bridge.
I could feel myself relax just slightly.
“Thank you,” Hugh said, still bent over the communications panel. “Now I can hear myself think.”
I sloshed through the water and checked the other crew members, just to be sure, then went back over to the captain’s panel and clicked on the flight record.
I had been trained a number of years back in small craft flight, and this ship wasn’t much larger than the ones I had flown in short, five-light-year jumps.
I fast-forwarded to the moment of the alarms.
“Looks like the transwarp drive caught something and had a catastrophic failure,” I said out loud to Hugh. “It was ejected instantly, so the failsafe worked.”
“Luckily,” he said, “or we would have never even realized why we never woke up.”
“The ejection dropped the ship and crew into regular space, and they spent two months real-time limping their way at sub-light to this system and this planet.”
“Means a bunch of people are looking for us already,” Hugh said. “How fast were they traveling?”
“One-tenth light,” I said, finding the reference in the record.
Hugh nodded. “Good, then it has been less than six months, real-time.”
I glanced over at him again. He had his back to me, still focused very intently on the communications board. How could someone with that nice a butt have such a powerful brain? He had figured out the real-time speed time-deletion factors almost faster than I had.
I shook my head and went back to following the record. “There was engine damage from the transwarp drive ejection, so they ended up crash-landing here. When the front of the ship sheared-off, they died almost instantly.”
“They are heroes,” Hugh said, turning to look at me with a very serious expression. “They saved our lives.”
“How’s that?”
“They got sub-light distress signals out on the way here, and again before they crashed. Help is on the way.”
He moved over through the water and clicked the alarms back on, killing the peaceful quiet.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. The sound just grated on me.
“Distress beacon,” he said. “That’s the signal that will lead the rescue ships to us.”
Smith's Monthly #19 Page 5