On the way, we passed something familiar. It was a large machine, with a big red handle.
“I see you’ve still got your Doomsday Machine,” I said.
“Oh, you’ve got to have a Doomsday Machine. I’d feel naked without one. I mean, what if something went wrong with one of my plans? Stop pulling on the handle, you idiot!”
“I just wanted to see how much play was in it.”
“Well, next time just ask me.”
“All right. Hey, when are we going to get to the DeathBox?”
“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.”
He guided me over to the box and opened the door. I walked inside and looked around.
“Doesn’t look like much,” I sniffed.
“Oh, it does the job, I assure you. It bursts each cell in the human body individually, in rapid succession. You’ll go off like an atom bomb. And then you will cease to trouble me, in any time period.”
“Won’t an explosion like that do damage to the building? Or at least to the box?”
“No. The DeathBox is made of the strongest substance known to man: painted iron. It can stand up to anything, even a human body going nuclear. Oh, our ears will ring for awhile around here, but the only thing that will be destroyed is you.”
“Oh, okay. I thought I’d spotted a flaw in your plan.”
“Well you didn’t.”
“Fine.” I looked around some more. “Hey! There isn’t a ventilation shaft in this box.”
“No.”
“Well, how am I going to get out?”
“You’re not.”
I looked at him with horror. This was horrible. He started to close the door. I tried to get him to change his mind.
“Wait! You think of yourself as a modern day Abraham Lincoln. Would Lincoln do this? Would Lincoln kill people just to have things his own way? Think man!”
My pleadings fell on deaf ears. Then I tried appealing to his comedy sense.
“How about the old switcheroo?”
“What’s that?”
“That’s where you say you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill me, you’re going to kill me, then you don’t kill me. It’s hilarious.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Yes you do, look…”
He started closing the door, but he couldn’t quite get it closed because my foot was in it. He looked around for a hatchet to chop my foot off. I used the brief respite to make one last appeal.
“You can’t do this to me. You’re my best friend.”
He stared at me. “I’m your best friend?”
“Well… yeah. I only have a few friends. And they all treat me worse than you do. So, yeah, you’re my best friend in the whole world.”
“That’s pathetic.”
“Only a true friend would tell me that. Thank you, pal. Now let me out.”
He swung the hatchet at my foot and I got it out of the way just in time. Then he slammed the door and bolted it. He looked at me through the door’s small window. I made as friendly a face as I could and then pointed it at him. He didn’t respond. I kept making my face friendlier and friendlier to the point where both of us were getting kind of nauseated. It was a question of who would puke first. Finally he opened the door.
“I can’t do it. Come on out.”
I stepped out of the DeathBox, relieved. That was a close one. I had been about to stop looking friendly and start calling him an ugly bastard. But friendship had triumphed just in the nick of time.
I started to thank Overkill for his magnanimous gesture and assure him he would never regret it. Just then, Fred Foster, Secret Agent, burst into the room, having somehow fallen out of the White House dungeon, and came charging across the room at me.
I tried to duck out of the way, but he crashed into me and I toppled heavily over onto Overkill, driving the hatchet he was holding deep into his chest.
I stood up, shakily, and looked at Overkill. He appeared to be dead. I had killed him again. I looked at Foster, who was lying face down on the floor, singing loudly into the planks.
I tried to give Overkill CPR, but I’ve never been very good at that, and by the time I was finished, his chest was a mess and his head was gone. It probably rolled somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.
I stood up and leaned against the Doomsday Machine lever to think about what I had accidentally done, and figure out what was the smartest thing to do now.
The lever came down with a sharp clunk and the universe started to end.
Everything started to shake and there was a high-pitched “Sqeeeee!” coming from the atoms around me. I didn’t like that. That didn’t sound right to me. I couldn’t get the lever to go back up, and the “sqeeeees” were growing louder and more high-pitched, so I figured I’d better get out of there. I started to run, carefully avoiding the building’s security devices which I had apparently also triggered. Lincoln hats were shooting out of walls and big beards and warts were dropping from the ceiling. And all the time I was trying to outrun the end of the universe. What a day!
The door to the outside was locked, apparently shut down by the security system. I ran back the way I had come, looking for another door, or maybe a window. Suddenly I tripped over Overkill’s body and went ass over teakettle into the DeathBox. The door slammed shut and the machinery started up, beginning the “Death Process.”™
I banged on the door, but it wouldn’t open.
I tried taking the machine apart from the inside with a small screwdriver somebody had given me in change, but there had to be at least a million screws in that thing.
I finally gave up and threw the screwdriver against the door. The only other thing I had to throw against the door, unless I wanted to try throwing the screwdriver again, was me, so I threw that. That didn’t work either. Nothing was working around here.
The cells in my body were starting to explode, just like Overkill had said they would. At least the DeathBox worked. My nose cells were going first. They were closest to the front of the box, the business end, I guess you’d call it. I probed my nose gingerly with an exploding fingertip. Part of the nose was gone, all right. The best part, too. The part with the holes in it. I clenched my exploding teeth and waited for the end.
Suddenly the machine stopped. I looked out the window and saw that the DeathBox controls had been vaporized along with the rest of the building. The end of the universe had saved me, though probably only temporarily.
Since I only had a small window to look out of, I can’t give you a good description of what the end of the universe looked like. But I can imagine what it was like: a horrible shaking everywhere, people running around screaming their heads off, things falling off shelves, workmen dropping panes of glass they were carrying, painters painting a wriggly line down the center of the street instead of a straight line, things like that. I had seen enough disaster pictures to know what it probably looked like.
At this point the DeathBox started shaking violently, throwing me from one end of the box to the other.
The last thing I remember seeing before I was knocked unconscious by the constant buffeting was Fred Foster’s face in the DeathBox window, mouthing the words: “You’re mad, Overkill.”
When I regained consciousness some time later, the first thing I noticed was that the door to the DeathBox was partway open. It had been charred black and bent almost beyond recognition.
I kicked the door completely open, and it disintegrated. Then I kicked the hell out of the DeathBox. It disintegrated too. That felt good. Scare me, will you? Burly 1, DeathBox 0.
Then I turned and saw where I was, and I regretted kicking the DeathBox to pieces. Apparently it and I were the only things left in the universe. If I hadn’t kicked it to bits, at least I wouldn’t have been alone. I could have talked to the box. Now there was just me.
I was floating in limbo, all alone. The universe was gone. It had ended with a bang and a whimper. The whimper, I noticed, was coming from me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN<
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It was quiet. Too quiet.
And cold. Mighty cold.
I was bobbing about in what seemed like a thin milky haze. The haze stretched as far as I could see in every direction. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew instinctively that I was in the wrong place.
I started trying to get to the horizon so I could kick my way through it and get out of here. Go someplace better.
I had trouble moving through the murk at first, but after awhile I found that I could make slow progress in any direction I wanted by pointing my mouth in the opposite direction and screaming continuously. Farts, I accidentally discovered, worked also. Nothing, however, made me move very fast, so progress was slow. Not that I had anything better to do, of course, but a person likes to make good time when he’s traveling.
When I got to what I had thought was the horizon, I found out it wasn’t the horizon anymore. There was a new horizon now, back where I had been before. Fine. No problem. I’ll go that way then. And off I farted.
It would probably be tedious reading to have to follow me through all my floating adventures. I know it seemed tedious to me when I re-read my first draft. I ended up cutting about 400 pages of it out, and I don’t miss any of it. All that floating from one spot to another just bogged down the narrative, in my opinion.
So about 400 pages later, I found myself pretty much back in the same spot I had started out in. I had no idea where I was. It’s all well and good to say you’re in “limbo,” but where the hell is that? What does it mean? Talk English! And get me out of here, while you’re at it.
It’s the boredom of a total void that gets to you the most. There’s nobody to talk to, no magazines to read, nowhere to sit down and take a load off your feet. Nothing.
Still, I was alive, and not many people could say that, thanks to me. I found some comfort in the fact that I was the last man alive. Out of the uncounted billions who had inhabited our universe, I was the last man standing. I had won the human race.
And, of course, there are good things about being in a total void. There are no distractions, for one thing. So you can get things done, if you can find anything to do. And there are no more wars. Finally we had world peace. So, criticize me all you want, at least I got that done.
But it was still basically boring as hell.
I had my toothbrush with me, so I spent a lot of time brushing my teeth. Nothing to eat though. Except the toothbrush. So I finally ate that.
Having some solid food in my stomach gave me a second wind. I renewed my efforts to get out of there - struggling furiously across the void, then struggling furiously back the other way. I was determined not to take “no” for an answer this time. After awhile I noticed all this struggling was wearing me out, and getting me nowhere. I had half a mind to stop struggling at this point. Maybe take “no” for an answer. Then I decided to continue struggling, but on a reduced schedule. For the next few days I would struggle for four hours in the morning, take a break for lunch (I had found another toothbrush and some car keys), then resume struggling until five. Then I’d knock off for the day.
Finally I got tired of the whole business and just quit doing anything. I just kind of laid in the void slantways looking pissed. If anyone had been watching me, they would have seen me, my hand resting on my chin, falling slowly across the void. I must have looked like a goddamn screensaver.
Okay, I just cut out another 96 pages. Mostly just stuff about me lying slantways.
Just when I was about to give up and start really lying slantways, at a much more pronounced slant, I suddenly felt an odd spinning sensation. There was nothing to reference in my surroundings, so I couldn’t be sure, but I seemed to be spinning around and around, with my arms and legs outstretched, against what used to be a milky white background, but was now all stripy colored. The Time Nozzle, wherever it was, was pulling me out of this time period and sending me somewhere else!
As I spun away I heard what sounded like shrieks from Time Nozzle technicians somewhere in time saying: “He’s coming right at us!” but I don’t know if I was coming at them or not.
The last thing I saw – or thought I saw, I may have imagined it – before I popped out of the year 2265, was God running towards me through the void, shaking His fist angrily at me. At least I think it was God. He had the short legs and pencil thin mustache I associate with the Almighty. But before He could reach me I was gone.
Things got confused for awhile after that, as I began being thrown all over time by the plainly malfunctioning Time Nozzle.
I briefly appeared in the year 1467, where I heard someone say: “It’s a witch!” And then, as I popped off again, the last thing I heard was someone saying: “It was a witch!”
I appeared in 1865, where I told Lincoln what Overkill had done, stealing his identity and oppressing the future with it, and Lincoln said it figured.
And I spent a month in 1755 Philadelphia, running a wig shop. I spent my spare time looking for Ben Franklin, so we could exchange witty remarks. I must have checked every building in that town. The guy just wasn’t there. I felt that violated every rule of time traveling I had ever heard of. The big celebrity of the time period is always there. But there wasn’t anybody to complain to about it, so I dropped it. But I still think it stinks. I had a terrific witty remark all ready for Franklin. He would have laughed his ass off.
Finally I arrived back in 2007 on Overkill’s island.
As so often happens in time traveling – possibly because the space/time continuum likes its little joke, or, more likely, because the universe is run by a bunch of hacks - the moment I arrived back on the island was the exact moment I had walked into The Time Nozzle to try to get it to work.
I shouted at myself to “Stop! Don’t go in there!” and heard myself reply: “Screw you!” I remembered saying that to somebody, but I didn’t know it was me.
A few moments later I saw Fred Foster charge into The Time Nozzle after me, his arms whirling like pinwheels. This was followed by the sounds of a terrific scuffle. Then the machinery suddenly started up and thousands of future fighters raced out of The Time Nozzle into the laboratory and, with no other instructions, began to fight with everything they saw: chairs, file cabinets, pictures on the walls, even the control panel for The Time Nozzle. Then they fought their way through the door and streamed out of the fortress to fight with the world.
I had planned to wait until the coast was clear and then operate The Time Nozzle controls to bring myself back, so there would be two of me here. Then the world had better look out. I could work two jobs then. Make twice as much money.
But when I got down from the light fixture I was hanging from and took a look at The Time Nozzle, I saw that it had been pretty much smashed to pieces. It was just a worthless piece of TV memorabilia now.
I wished somebody had smashed it sooner.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I had expected there to be a lot of fighting going on outside the fortress, but things were relatively quiet now. The only fighting that was going on when I got out there was between the future fighters and various inanimate objects. While they furiously attacked statues, palm trees, and sprinkler systems, the government troops and my Unholy Army hid behind bushes together, waiting for the newcomers to leave so they could go back to killing each other. It was too dangerous to kill each other out there right now.
I tried to make my way past the future fighters to the water without being seen, but I’m not as stealthy as I’d like to be. Maybe if I lost some weight I’d be stealthier. Or maybe I need to gain a lot more weight. Anyway, they spotted me in about five seconds.
They started coming towards me. I wondered if they knew that I was the one who had brought them here and was responsible for them getting their great medical plans. I tried giving them an order.
“Halt!” I commanded.
They kept coming. I tried another order.
“Stop looking at me like that!”
Their expressions didn’t change.<
br />
I turned to run and bumped violently into a huge metal Picasso sculpture that Overkill had stolen from Chicago. It collapsed into a million pieces. The future fighters stopped, stunned. They had been trying to bust up that statue for hours. As I said earlier, it’s all about not being balanced properly.
With me leading the way, we tore up that island six ways from Sunday. They made way for me whenever something particularly valuable needed to be destroyed. I was quite enjoying myself and thinking of maybe staying a little longer and going home in the morning. But good sense finally prevailed. I suddenly broke for the water and entered it in a low flat dive, sank quickly to the bottom, then struggled back up to the surface. I had forgotten that I didn’t know how to swim. I remembered it now, though. The bottom of the lake reminded me.
Fortunately, the water was filled with floating debris and handy corpses to hang onto. The future fighters had ripped up the attacking ships as easily as they had ripped up everything else and the surface of the lake was more debris than water. You could practically walk on it. I slowly and carefully worked my way to shore.
Central City was a total mess. The future fighters were all over the streets, pushing over buildings, punching out streetlights, tipping over trucks and cars, eating the pavement, stamping policemen flat, and tearing newspapermen to shreds.
A few hardy souls were trying to fight back, firing at the invaders, but the bullets not only didn’t stop them, the invaders actually caught the bullets and ate them. One future fighter liked the taste so much he picked up an abandoned rifle and emptied the entire clip down his throat. People stopped firing guns at them after that. There didn’t seem to be much point in feeding the creatures.
When I saw all the mindless destruction going on, I didn’t hesitate. I joined right in, once again impressing the future fighters with my superior ability to destroy. You know that 600 foot tall revolving restaurant in the center of town? I destroyed that. Just leaned on it while I was eating a sandwich. Impressed the hell out of the guys.
The Exploding Detective Page 10