The prisoner asked her, “What was that thing I stepped on? Am I hallucinating, or did a bunch of random stuff pop out of it?”
Agent 29333 answered in a low whisper, “I don’t know what it was. My classified level only grants me access to so much information about this earth. But judging by the earth we’re on, it likely had something to do with time anomalies. Now keep quiet.”
Agent 27142 decided to be gracious and answer the question, calling over his shoulder, “Your instincts were correct, Agent 29333. That was an Anachro-Mine.”
Before Agent 27142 could continue explaining, the prisoner interrupted him. “What’s an Anachro-Mine?”
Agent 27142 sighed, and then he replied, “I was not finished explaining, you fool. Agent 29333, slap him across the headwound and ensure he does not speak to me for the remainder of the mission.”
When Agent 27142 heard the thump behind him and the groan of the prisoner, he continued, “As I mentioned to you before, we are on Earth 4, home to the B.T.T.—and before you ask and earn another beating, B.T.T. stands for the Bureau of Time Travel. The mine you stepped on created a weaponized time anomaly, retrieving random creatures from across infinite timestreams at the most stressed and angry points in their existences. So be wary as we move forward to not activate another. We were rather lucky with the meager caliber of creatures that were summoned from that last one.”
Prisoner-Art chimed in, “B-But that’s stupid.” Agent 27142 could picture the idiot biting his lip, trying not to comment and then failing.
Before Agent 27142 could instruct Agent 29333 to punish the fool for his insolence, she was already doing so, and his love for her grew. Agent 27142 continued striding toward the back of the cave. As he did so, he listened to the thumps as she threw the prisoner to the ground and kicked him over and over, seemingly in beat with each of Agent 27142’s footsteps.
He knew her so well that he could picture the scene without even needing to look: she would have a look of murderous delight in her eyes, her tongue would be poking playfully from the side of her mouth, and her hair would be tumbling from beneath her checkered hat to fall across her face. Now more than ever, he wanted to turn to her and kiss her, wanted to rub his forehead against hers, smearing the blood of the bludgeoned marines that had spattered upon her face onto his own, and wanted to stare into her eyes. But instead, he had his command and the Multiverse to consider, so he continued striding and relegated such notions to fantasy.
The column moved quickly and carefully toward the back of the cave, weaving back and forth at the behest of the readouts on their goggles and experiencing no other incidents with Anachro-Mines. Agent 27142 estimated that they had likely covered around a mile and a half when they finally reached the back of the cave. Looming before him stood what looked like a gargantuan stone dial protruding from the wall. The goggles gave no readout other than to say Rock when Agent 27142 stared at it. But he knew this stone dial was so much more than a rock.
Agent 27142 twisted the stone dial back and forth, following the pattern he had read in the dossier about this place when he had reached Classified Level Twelve over a year ago. Finally, after twisting a half-dozen times with just the right precision, he heard a loud CLANK within the wall. It opened.
Agent 27142 stepped through the threshold and entered the headquarters of the B.T.T. at the sub-basement level. Though it was as pitch dark in here as in the cave—as Agent 27142 had suspected it would be, since the dossier said this sub-basement was full of archived treasures from across the expanse of time and was no longer in active use—the goggles remained effective and allowed Agent 27142 and his soldiers to see.
The secret entrance led them into the southeastern-most corner of a colossal warehouse containing shelves that stood ten-stories high. Every single inch of the shelves was covered by a wooden crate marked with the name of some foreign artifact. Agent 27142 saw one marked Ra’s Phallus, and he frowned. He crept to the end of this shelving row and peeked around its corner. The shelves stretched for a half-mile—an almost dizzying sight of intense organization—and ended at an elevator bank consisting of four lifts. A computer terminal sat next to the elevators. The goggles pointed out the security system guarding this sub-basement: a laser-alarm grid that crisscrossed the floor just above the ground. The goggles allowed him and his men to see the lasers, so they would be easy to avoid.
Agent 27142 turned back to his soldiers. Without speaking, he used standard B.I.T. hand and body signals to express, “We need silence from here on out. Spread out and be careful. I need to access the computer terminal at the far end of this room to locate our target. Avoid the lasers, because they will activate an alarm. If anyone triggers it, I will personally murder you in the most slow and painful manner imaginable.”
Before Prisoner-Art had the opportunity to ask what Agent 27142 was doing with his hands and gyrating hips, Agent 29333 put her hand over his mouth to shush him. Agent 27142 smiled at her and nodded. She nodded back.
Agent 27142 turned and led the soldiers toward the far end of the sub-basement. The lasers were spread far enough apart that they were easy to dance between, so the group made it to the far side of the sub-basement quickly and with no problems. Agent 27142 said a silent prayer in thanks to the High Commander for that piece of good luck, since the rest of this journey was unlikely to be so easy.
Agent 27142 sat down at the computer terminal and turned it on. It whirred for a few seconds and finally booted up. He began typing furiously. It took him little time to locate the target he came here to find. He also found an interesting piece of information about one of the other caves near where the B.I.T. shift-shuttles had landed, so he smiled and pocketed that tidbit for later use.
Chapter 21
FATHER TIME JUST WANTS FRIENDS
“Interesting,” whispered Officer-Art to himself as his fingers clacked across the keyboard. “I shall need to make a second stop on the way out.”
Normal-Art knew better than to inquire what Officer-Art meant by the statement. Normal-Art was still reeling from the Anachro-Mine explosion, and he had spent what little remaining energy he had left crawling over and dancing around thin green alarm lasers in the stupid giant warehouse room, so he could not survive another beating right now.
It was at times like these that he really missed his original kidnapper. Though the god-version of himself had been incredibly annoying and selfish and deprecating, the god never beat him senseless for saying or asking anything that popped into his mind, no matter how inane the thoughts might have been. Normal-Art expressed this longing through a stifled shrug.
Officer-Art stood from the computer terminal and turned to face the soldiers. He began pirouetting and twirling in place and gesticulating with his fingers and hands, just like he had done a few minutes ago to instruct the group to spread out and stay silent. Normal-Art swallowed a sigh and bit his lip, everything within him begging him to ridicule the B.I.T.’s stupid system of silent communication. He wondered for a moment whether they taught you the ballet as part of basic training, or whether the agency recruited people specifically with a talent for twirling.
Instead of asking, Normal-Art merely read the translation that scrolled across the lenses of his goggles: “The item we seek is stored on level seventy-four. Squadron Umbrella, you will stay at the lift and guard it for our return. We may be leaving at a sprint, so ensure the lift is ready and waiting for us.”
“Squadron Zero,” Officer-Art continued through swirls and gestures, “If anything goes wrong or we are caught, you are to run in the opposite direction and create chaos to distract our foe. Squadron Twelve, you are to stay with me no matter what, and form a human shield around me and Agent 29333 when necessary.”
Normal-Art noted that Officer-Art made no mention of him. Though the brute would never admit it, Art could tell by Officer-Art’s longing glances and slightly higher tone when he spoke to Officer-Ginny that he was smitten with her. Thus, Normal-Art shuffled a few inches closer to her
and made a mental note to stay there, as that seemed his best option for survival. The soldiers saluted silently. Officer-Art pressed the buttons to call each lift.
About twenty seconds later, all four elevators arrived and opened. The soldiers split evenly into each elevator. Normal-Art, Officer-Art, and Officer-Ginny entered last, allowing the others to first cram into the metal boxes. Officer-Art pressed the button marked with the numerals 74. The door slammed shut and the elevator jerked upward. Normal-Art’s inner-child beat on the inside of his skull with its tiny baby fists, demanding Art take his plaster-encased hands and rub them across all the floor number buttons so that the elevator would stop on every level. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, smothering his inner-child to resist the urge.
Less than a minute later, the lift jerked to a halt. The elevator doors opened onto an empty hallway that lay twenty-feet wide and was lit with fluorescent lights. Upon seeing that the hallway was empty, Officer-Art sighed in relief. As every member of the party in turn followed Officer-Art’s gaze and understood that their raid seemed to have so far gone undetected by the B.T.T. and that there was thus no ambush waiting for them here, tension released from their shoulders and an accompanying sigh escaped their lips. It sounded to Normal-Art like a chorus of huffing clouds had taken residence in the elevator. Some spittle landed on the back of his neck, and he updated his metaphor appropriately, imagining instead a chorus of huffing storm clouds in the elevator. Officer-Art stepped off the lift and everyone followed.
The hall reminded Normal-Art of a hospital. It even smelled sterile like a hospital. Portraits of robed men and women and creatures lined the hallway, below each a plaque that featured a name and a quote. Normal-Art frowned at the two nearest quotes. The first lay below a portrait of a bearded man in a light blue robe and read, “Time is circular. Study now, and you can enjoy the party when it comes back around.” The second quote sat below a portrait of an oversized frog in a maroon robe and read, “Think of the 4th dimension like a wall. You can see any moment on it, but don’t look too hard or you’ll notice all the cracks.”
The hallway stretched on for another few dozen yards before coming to a fork that branched in three different directions. When Officer-Art came to the fork, he glanced down each option. He turned back to his soldiers and gesticulated. The readout in Art’s goggles scrolled, “No sign of B.T.T. agents thus far. Keep your eyes and/or other vision orifices peeled.”
He chose the rightmost option. Normal-Art and the soldiers followed, finding themselves in another identical-looking hallway with an identical-looking fork at its end. The group repeated the same process, taking the rightmost fork, and then repeated it again three more times when they entered three more hallways with identical three-pronged forks. Normal-Art vaguely understood how geometry worked, so he wondered why they had not come back to where they started after taking so many turns in the same direction.
Officer-Ginny silently danced the answer to him before he could ask, the scrolling words across his goggles reading, “Each hallway’s a little shorter and smaller than the last. We’re spiraling closer to the center of this place. Worry instead about the fact that we’ve encountered no B.T.T. agents guarding this area and no B.T.T. resistance. I would have expected our calling those lifts to an unused sub-basement to have sent an alert to someone. This lack of security concerns me.”
At the next fork, Officer-Art led the group through the middle option in the fork. This option led them into another portrait-lined hallway, but instead of ending in a fork, it ended in a wooden door twenty-feet tall by twenty-feet wide. Officer-Art opened it, and within lay a bustling factory hundreds of feet long by hundreds of feet high.
Officer-Art nodded. He removed an object from his holster that looked like a small roll of scotch tape. He went to work taping the threshold of the door, ripping off strips long enough so the tape stuck to both the inside of the door on the factory side and outside the door in this mundane hallway.
Normal-Art nudged Officer-Ginny and nodded inquisitively at Officer-Art. Officer-Ginny nodded and began gesturing and dancing at Normal-Art. The readout in his goggles scrolled, “That room apparently sits within a pocket dimension. You’ve seen this technology at B.I.T. headquarters. Pocket dimensions allow nearly limitless space within an area normally confined by limited space. It actually explains the lack of guards: you can set them so that they detach and seal if intruders are present, thus locking the intruders in the alternate pocket dimension until you decide how to dispose of them. But the B.I.T. has tools that prevent such detachment, one of which—Dimensional Binding Tape—Agent 27142 is using now.”
By the time Normal-Art finished reading through the scrolling explanation, Officer-Art was finished with his task and through the door, along with everyone except Normal-Art and Officer-Ginny. The two of them stepped through, and Art stifled a surprised gasp. This was not just any factory.
Off to the left stood row upon row of shelves, all full of pallets loaded with sealed crates. The crates seemed to glow from within with an eerie blue light.
Off to the right sat a golden throne ninety-feet tall. Gilded scrollwork of clocks and the phases of the moon adorned the mighty throne. Upon the throne sat a giant in a light blue robe. His white beard stretched all the way down past his gnarled knees and curled toes to form a thick carpet on the floor. His head was bald. His ears were gigantic, with white hairs as tall as Art poking out of them at all angles. The giant’s eyes were closed, and his skin was so blue that it reminded Normal-Art of a frozen corpse. Two arms stretched from the sleeves of the robe—gigantic in size but emaciated in appearance—ending in a pair of liver-spotted hands that gripped the armrests of the throne with what seemed to be rigor mortis.
Normal-Art and every single member of the group stared at the giant in silent awe. Suddenly, a pair of long, skinny robot arms appeared. These robot arms dangled from the ceiling high above, and their hands held a mammoth hypodermic needle the size of a cow. One of the robot hands brushed aside the giant’s beard and gingerly yanked open the giant’s robe, exposing a blue chest blanketed in coarse white hair and two nipples simultaneously the color of indigo and the size of tractor tires.
The robotic arm jabbed the needle into the giant’s heart. The creature did not stir, which was unsurprising to Art since it seemed to be a corpse. The second robotic hand pulled slowly back on the plunger portion of the needle, and the plastic barrel portion of it began filling with blue liquid that glowed so brightly it reminded Art of snow atop a mountain during a clear day.
When the syringe was filled, the robotic arms removed it from the giant’s chest, yanked the robe shut, and replaced the beard in its original position. One of the arms then disappeared into the ceiling only to return seconds later with a metal object shaped like a bomb. The shape reminded Normal-Art of the atomic bomb in his uncle’s favorite move, Doctor Strangelove, and Normal-Art knew he would need to resist the urge to ride the bomb in a recreation of his favorite scene in the movie if he were ever present in the future when it was dropped.
The robotic hands stuck the needle into the bomb and injected it with the glowing blue blood. The bomb itself began to glow blue. When the bomb was fully injected, one of the robot arms disappeared into the ceiling once more, this time returning with an unsealed wooden crate full of Styrofoam packing peanuts. The robotic hands inserted the bomb into the crate, sealed it, set it on a pallet on the bottom row of a nearby shelf, and disappeared up into the ceiling. They returned seconds later with a new hypodermic needle, beginning this extraction process anew.
Officer-Art gesticulated and pointed toward the newly-minted bomb, and the readout in Art’s goggles read, “We’ll take that one.”
Officer-Art dug into the side of his holster and pulled out a small metal rectangle. Officer-Art dropped it on the ground and tapped it three times with the toe of his boot. The metal piece hovered in the air and began unfolding. It unfolded over and over and over again. Normal-Art need not ask
what the object was, because he had seen it many times over the past decade. It was a Transdimensional Hovering Hand Truck. When tapped as Officer-Art had just done, it would unfold itself from within another dimension to form a hand truck that allowed easy transportation of goods too large for an agent to lug about with his hands.
Once the hand truck was fully materialized and floating in place, Officer-Art gestured silently to four soldiers from Squadron Zero. They pushed the hand truck over to the pallet upon which the new bomb sat and loaded the bomb onto the hand truck.
Alarms began blaring. A grinding sound came from near the door. When Normal glanced at the door, he could see the edge of the pocket dimension attempting to pull away from the exit. However, the tape held the doorway in place.
Art glanced back over toward the bomb. As the four soldiers pushed the hand truck back over to Officer-Art, a new robotic arm dropped from the ceiling holding what looked like a toy ray gun that Art had played with as a kid. When the robot arm squeezed the trigger, ringlets of energy sprayed forth in a tight cone. The arm fired at each of the four soldiers surrounding the hand cart. The goggles identified the gun as a Time-Phaser: used to reverse, pause, or fast-forward time. Normal-Art squealed in terror when each soldier was hit, subsequently devolved into a primate, and then kept devolving until they were naught but primordial sludge.
Officer-Art backed toward the exit. Officer-Ginny seemed to understand her commander’s strategy without needing to be told, for she grabbed Normal-Art by the scruff of the neck and pulled him toward the exit. Officer-Art yelled for six more men to grab the hand truck and push it toward the exit. They sprinted into action. They managed to dodge the ray gun’s payloads and return fire, disintegrating the robot arm with their Scatter Guns. They grabbed the cart and shoved it toward the exit.
The Endless War That Never Ends Page 18