Suddenly the door to the laboratory burst open and Fred Foster came roaring in. He spotted me in the middle of The Time Nozzle and charged in after me.
As we were wrestling around on the floor of the machine, one of us must have accidentally kicked the right stripe, because all of a sudden thousands of eight foot tall fully armored fighters from the future began streaming through the tunnel past us - the rockets on their shoulders gleaming, their ten inch metal fangs bared, and their fierce faces wearing the contented looks of death machines who knew they had medical insurance they could count on. I guess one of those buttons I had hit on the console must have been the “I accept” button I was looking for after all. I was delighted. My elite troops were here! Now I could fight back against the world that had been causing me so much trouble! Kill Maim Frighten Destroy!
As the last of the troops hurtled by, Foster and I began to be pulled slowly in the other direction, farther into The Time Nozzle. I tried to get up and get out of there, but Foster continued to grapple with me drunkenly and wouldn’t let go, reminding me all the time that I was insane, that my plan would never work, and that I was mad.
Our speed through the tunnel increased and then suddenly we were pinwheeling around against a weird colored background, still fighting. Finally we disappeared with a couple of angry pops.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I shot out of the end of what seemed like a big sewer pipe. A moment later Foster shot out of the same pipe and began drunkenly grappling with me.
“You’re mad, Overkill,” he said, as he slugged away clumsily at me, somehow, in his struggles, managing to step on his own face, and kick two of his own teeth out.
I threw him off of me and kicked him in the back of the head for luck just as a police officer hurried up.
“Here! What’s going on?” He demanded. “Stop that, you two!”
I looked the policeman over. There was something odd about him. I didn’t know what it was at first, then I realized it was that Lincoln beard of his. Hardly regulation, I thought. Oh well. I’m not running the department.
I pointed at Foster. “There he is, officer.”
“Who?”
“The guy who’s been causing all the trouble around here.”
The policemen picked up Foster by the collar. “Are you the one?”
Foster stopped singing and eyed the policeman, then told him his plan would never work.
“Right,” said the policeman grimly. He began roughly dragging Foster off, telling him he was taking him to jail, and no, they wouldn’t be stopping at a liquor store on the way, and it didn’t matter who was buying.
With Foster out of the way, I took a moment to assess my situation. I didn’t know where I was, as usual, but wherever I was it had to be better than the place I’d just left. It just had to be. I made sure nobody could follow me by kicking the end of The Time Nozzle to pieces. I knew I’d never regret doing that. Kicking things to pieces is the kind of thing you never regret. (But see Chapter Sixteen!)
I started walking towards what looked like the center of town. Judging from the streamlined office buildings and the tramps with fins on them, I figured I must be at some point in the future. The past didn’t have any streamlined buildings that I could recall. And the buildings I remembered as being new in the early 21st century were now quite dilapidated, and full of finned tramps.
Another tip-off that I had passed into the future was the strange kind of outfits everybody was wearing. They looked like something out of “A Clockwork Orange,” except with Lincoln style hats and beards. I also saw a flashing time and temperature sign that said it was May 23, 2265, and a huge banner that said “Welcome To The Future,” though on closer inspection I found out the banner was just part of an ad campaign for salted nuts.
I’d been to the future before, of course. I’ve been all over the space/time continuum at one time or another, though never, as near as I can recall, on purpose. But I’d never been to this particular era.
The whole place was Lincoln crazy, that was the first thing you noticed about it. Practically everybody was wearing Lincoln hats and Lincoln style beards. There were statues of Lincoln everywhere. Sometimes the statues seemed to be looking at you, even calling up people about you. It was all a bit much, if you ask me. I mean, I kind of like Lincoln myself, but come on!
The other obvious difference from my time was that everything was so small now. It was miniaturization gone wild. In an average citizen’s pocket you could find virtually everything he would ever need, including his house and his grave. And of course, all of these essentials were very inexpensive, since they were so completely worthless.
The only place you could find anything big was in the museums, where there were all kinds of displays of “ancient” 21st century handicrafts, like comically big hats that covered your whole head. And microscopes you could see without a microscope.
How this all came about is anybody’s guess. It was hard to get any solid facts about this time period or what led up to it, because of the miniaturization craze. All books, newspapers, magazines, and so on, had all been long ago converted to digits and placed in digital information storage systems, which over the years had gotten smaller and smaller until finally they were gone. So nobody knew much of anything anymore. They knew what they liked, but that was about it. And they liked Lincoln.
Since I was in the future, I expected to find some of the things George Orwell had predicted in his prophetic novel “1984.” I didn’t like to think that Orwell had just been shitting us. But I needn’t have worried. A few of his prophesies were right on the button. There were Thought Police roaming the streets, most of them dressed like William H. Seward, for some reason. But it was relatively easy to deal with them. They would say something like: “You there! What are you thinking?” And all you had to say was: “I’m thinking about how great the government is,” and they would say: “Very well. Carry on.”
The language had been tampered with too, as Orwell predicted. You couldn’t say “tax refund” anymore, for example. No such word. I didn’t mind. The fewer words there are, the smarter I sound. If we ever get down to just one word, I’m sure I’ll be able to say it as well as anybody.
As I walked around, I was surprised by the obvious lack of a population problem. I was always told back in the ignorant past, where I came from, that eventually there would be too many people. This plainly hadn’t happened. If anything, there were fewer people in the streets than there were in my time. I wondered why. An old guy who couldn’t move fast enough anymore to get away from me said it was because of the Equality Movement. Mankind had always been striving to make everyone equal. Once the government had finally succeeded in making us all equal in every way, it started wondering if it needed so many of us. That’s when the liquidations started.
I was also curious, and growing increasingly so, to know where a guy could get something to eat around here. I tried buying something at a restaurant, but they only took “Credits,” whatever those were. I held out some dollar bills, but they said those weren’t credits. I held up a button. That wasn’t a credit. I shook my fist at them. No credits there either. Eventually I found out a “credit” was a screwdriver. I checked my pockets, but I didn’t have any “credits” on me. I went to a hardware store and they had a screwdriver all right, but they wanted a shitload of screwdrivers for it. Kind of a Catch-22 there.
Fortunately, I knew where I could find some food. I spent the rest of the day digging up time capsules all over town and eating anything that was still edible inside. The chocolate bars and cookies were still good, though the TV dinners had thawed and gone bad long ago. There were other examples of 21st Century culture in the time capsules, of course, but I tossed all that stuff aside. It was the food I was after.
I knew where all the time capsules were, because I had helped bury them. After my first trip through time, I had talked the city fathers into burying dozens of them all over town. Time Capsule Week in Central City was my idea.
I didn’t care about preserving our stupid culture for halfwit future generations or anything stupid or halfwit like that. I just wanted to make sure that the next time I traveled through time I would have some food stashed somewhere.
I didn’t have anyplace to stay, so I made myself comfortable under an overpass and whiled away the time drinking time capsule wine and singing songs of my fathers.
After I’d been there awhile, I noticed I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by a half a dozen young punks who were dressed at the height of teen fashion. They were laughing and smecking and govreeting at me. I looked up at them.
A half hour later we were driving along in our Durango 95, playing hogs of the road. Those kids of the future sure know how to have a good time, I’ll say that for them.
It was during one of our Surprise Visits – this one to the home of a writer of subversive literature (the bastard) - that I was hit on the head with a milk bottle by one of my droogs and woke up in a cell at the police station.
I was holding my head and cursing the deceitfulness of future youth, when I noticed I was not alone in the cell. Fred Foster was in there with me.
We were still fighting the next morning when an important looking individual entered our cell. We let go of each others’ entrails and looked him over.
“The President wants to see you, Mr. Burly,” he said. “You and your little playmate.”
“Are you the President?”
“No.”
I digested this information. “Then it sounds like we’ve got some work to do.”
“Yes.”
An hour later we were in Washington. The Lincoln motif was even more prevalent there, I noticed. There must have been at least a hundred Lincoln Memorials scattered around town, and all the streets had been renamed Lincoln Avenue.
“Hey, what’s with all the Lincoln stuff?” I asked the man who was escorting us.
He didn’t answer. I guess he was thinking about something else. Lincoln, probably.
We were escorted into the White House and led up to a large door, which slowly swung open for us.
We walked cautiously through a huge hall towards a flickering light that was visible at one end. When we got closer to the light, we saw that it was a huge ball of fire shooting forty feet up into the air, with Abraham Lincoln’s furious face in the flames.
“Four score!” It thundered. “Four score!”
Foster seemed unnerved by the sight. He tried to hide behind himself, somehow ending up with his head stuck in his back pocket.
I wasn’t frightened. I had seen the Wizard of Oz a thousand times. I walked across the room to a small curtained area that was off to one side and pulled the curtains open to reveal a much smaller Lincoln. But when it spoke, it wasn’t in Lincoln’s voice.
“Pretty neat setup, eh, Burly?” asked Overkill.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was surprised to hear Overkill’s voice for a number of reasons. For one thing, the last time I had seen him he was dead. And that was 200 years ago. And he had looked a little like Edward G. Robinson then, not a lot like Abe Lincoln.
“Welcome to the 23rd Century, Frank,” he said. “It’s been a long time. The last time we met, let’s see when was it? Oh, yes, I remember now, it’s when YOU KILLED ME.”
“I’ve been meaning to apologize about that.”
“That was the last time I met anybody, because I was DEAD.”
“I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Nor will I.”
“I wish I were never born.”
“We all wish that.”
My apologies weren’t going over very well. I decided to give up on them. “Go on with what you were saying,” I said, with a small wave of my hand.
“But I didn’t stay dead,” he continued. “A strange thing happened. I would call it a miracle, but I don’t think God gets involved in stuff like this. It’s not His area. I was suddenly conscious again, lying on an operating table, with doctors working on me and comparing my face to a picture of Abraham Lincoln they had on a five dollar bill, and scratching their heads.
“I didn’t know what was going on at first. I was a bit disoriented. I mean, one minute you’re in Heaven, the next…”
“Wait. You were in Heaven?”
“Yes.” He saw my look. “I sent someone a Christmas card once.”
“That’s all it takes?”
“Yes. Now will you let me finish my story?”
“Oh, okay. Sorry.”
“I didn’t know why they were going to so much trouble to bring me back to life. But I gradually pieced it all together. It seems the world had lost its way in the 23rd Century, or thought it had, and decided it needed a complete makeover. Somehow the copy of ‘The Life of Lincoln’ from my library had turned up here, as well as my copies of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘1984.’” He looked at me. I didn’t say anything.
“All other books had been lost for years, thanks to miniaturization, and my three books were avidly read by everybody. Gradually it began to dawn on them that the future they had created wasn’t nearly as interesting as the future that had been prophesized. All anybody was doing around here was just sitting around watching TV and bitching about things. The future was supposed to be more interesting than that. They felt like they had really dropped the ball.
“They began patterning their present on the prophesies of the future they found in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘1984.’ And the Lincoln book told them who they should get to run the place right. They used a time scanning device to locate Lincoln in the past. The last place his body showed up was on my island. After you killed me, by the way, where did you stash my body?”
“In that room you had Lincoln in. It was empty, so I figured it would be a good place to put you. Under the bed. With some old clothes piled on top of you.”
He gave me a look.
“Your body didn’t fit in with my plans,” I said.
He grunted, then continued: “I guess that explains why they thought they were getting Lincoln when they pulled me forward in time. They were a little confused when I didn’t look like the pictures of Lincoln they had. In fact, my face didn’t look like anything. It was mashed to a pulp.” He looked at me again.
“I got upset when I realized I had killed you,” I explained.
He grimaced. “But they knew I had to be Lincoln. Their scanning devices did not make mistakes, the manufacturer insisted, or your money back. So, using old photographs and hearsay, they rebuilt me to look as much like Lincoln as they could. Then they turned the world over to me. Gave me absolute power. Told me to fix the place up right. And I have fixed it up right. It’s a perfect world now. For me, anyway. And everyone is happy. Or they’d better be. South Carolina seceded, but I expected that.”
I stared at him, impressed. He was actually ruling the world, just like he’d always said he would. And I had thought he was crazy. I could tell him that now. Though I guess I shouldn’t have, judging by the look on his face, and the distance he spit out his coffee.
I decided this might be a good time for me to be toddling along. I didn’t like the way his head was elongating. “I am glad everything turned out all right for you,” I said, shaking his unresponsive hand. “And now, I’ll be saying goodbye.”
“Stay awhile.”
“All right.”
He looked up at the boiling ball of flaming gas that now showed he and I chatting amiably. Foster was furiously fighting with it, but getting nowhere.
“Who’s your friend?”
“That’s Fred Foster, the secret agent. But he‘s not really my friend. He’s just been following me around through time and space trying to kill me.”
“Foster, eh? I’ve heard of him. He can be dangerous when he’s sober.”
He snapped his fingers and several guards ran up.
“Put Mr. Foster in the Blue Dungeon. I’ll deal with him later. Make sure he has plenty to drink.”
The guards saluted, quickly apprehended Foster an
d dragged him, singing, out of the room.
Overkill turned back to me. “Now let’s go to my Revenge Room.”
“Lead on.”
“I built it just for you.”
“Sounds great.”
He led me out to the elevators. As we walked, he glanced at me approvingly. “I see you quit smoking, as I advised.”
“Yes, but only because nobody seems to make cigarettes anymore. The only cigarettes left are in museums, and I’ve smoked all of those.”
We took the elevator down as far as it would go, then he graciously escorted me into the bowels of the building.
I felt I should keep complimenting this dangerous man. “Nice bowels in this building.”
“Thank you.”
He led me through some dim corridors to a particularly nasty looking door that was covered with warning signs. I didn’t bother to read what they said, but it was something about not going inside.
We went inside.
“I’ve got everything I want now,” he said quietly, as the door closed. “Including the revenge I’ve always sought on the man who killed me. Come, let me show you my DeathBox.”
“All right.”
As he began leading me towards what sounded like my doom, I had a sudden inspiration. I realized I was still wearing Overkill’s shiny black ring. The One Ring That Rules Them All. I held it up so Overkill’s guards could see it. Then I pointed at Overkill.
“Seize him!” I commanded.
The guards stared at me stonily. Only one of them made a move to seize Overkill, and he stopped and coughed when he saw he was the only one.
I held the ring higher and moved it a little closer to them. “Seize him, my pretties!”
Still nothing, except that one guy again.
I looked at Overkill. He held up his hand. He was wearing an even bigger ring than I was.
“When I noticed my ring was missing, I figured I’d better make another one,” he explained.
Ignoring my offers to trade rings – I wasn’t proposing a straight swap. I was willing to throw in some cash - he led me towards a box in the center of the room that was about twice the size of a phone booth.
The Exploding Detective Page 9