“You—”
“Also, can you back away from the window a little? Talking to a big eye is kind of freaking me out.”
“No. I shall—”
“Hey, come on, pal,” Cal said, offering one of his most well-rehearsed smiles. “I’ve had a hell of a day. Do me a favor here.”
The Time Titan hesitated. Finally, it tutted. “Fine,” it agreed. “But everyone shut your eyes.”
“Say what?” asked Mech.
“I’ll move back a bit, but first you’ve got to shut your eyes.”
Cal wagged a finger at the big eye. “Hold on. You’re not going to cast us into that void of eternal suffering when we’re not looking, are you?”
“No.”
“Be honest!”
“Look, do you want me to move back or not?”
Cal called Mech and Loren into a huddle. Miz was too busy sniffing the air to join in. She had padded away a little, moving vaguely in the direction of a little DJ booth at the corner of the dance floor.
After a few seconds of whispering, the huddle broke apart. Cal addressed the window with an offer. “What if we kept our eyes open, but turned around?”
The Time Titan considered this. “That is acceptable,” he intoned. “But no peeking.”
“Deal,” said Cal.
“I mean it.”
“Jesus, OK. We won’t look. You have my word,” Cal said.
He, Loren and Mech all turned their backs on the window.
“So, what do we think?” Cal whispered.
“About what?” Mech grunted. “I don’t even know what’s going on anymore.”
“About the time guy. What do we think?”
“He’s big,” said Loren.
Cal raised his eyebrows. “Is he big? I hadn’t noticed,” he said, then his voice dropped to a hiss. “We know he’s fonking big! I mean what do we do?”
“You may turn around,” announced the Time Titan.
As they did, a low involuntary whistle escaped Cal’s lips. “Is he… I mean, just so I know, Loren. Is he still big?”
The Time Titan was most definitely still big, even now that he was substantially further away. If anything, the distance somehow made him look bigger, despite the shift in perspective.
He was totally hairless, from the top of his giant domed head to the tips of his house-sized toes. His skin was a shimmering gray, or possibly a dull silver, and his eyes were two black pools that shone with the light of a billion reflected stars.
Around his neck was the chunkiest gold chain Cal had ever seen. Hanging from it was a clock face. Or, more accurately, an infinite number of different clock faces all existing in the same place at the same time, most of them ornately decorated with precious metals and shiny stones.
Aside from this one piece of bling, the Time Titan was completely naked. Fortunately, he had no giant space genitalia to speak of, which came as a relief to all present.
His arms were down by his sides, and the whole figure seemed quite rigid, almost like it were standing to attention.
“There,” boomed the Time Titan. He didn’t move his lips, and despite his increased distance there was no decrease in his volume. “It is done.”
There was an awkward moment of silence, as if the Time Titan couldn’t quite pick up the thread of the previous conversation.
“So there,” he said, mustering quite an impressive amount of gravitas given the statement’s less than dazzling content.
Cal puffed out his cheeks. “Well, that told us,” he said. “Now, you were going to be more specific about what we’re supposed to have done wrong. Shoot.”
Miz stopped outside the DJ booth. It was the size of a very small shed, or maybe a bus shelter made to hold two people who knew each other very well. It had been painted a really quite eye-watering shade of orange, then inexpertly adorned with an overabundance of fake gemstones and flashing lights.
There was text emblazoned across the front of it in luminous green. Miz had never seen the Comic Sans typeface before. If she had, she’d have thought it remarkably similar to the font used here.
Her visual translation chip was having some difficulty with the writing, and it fluctuated between a couple of alternatives. The text on the booth either said: MC Jokemeister General – The Cheesiest Beat’s & Wackiest Laugh’s (stray apostrophes included), or: I’m so very, very alone. Miz wasn’t sure which of the two was correct, but she had her suspicions.
She sniffed the door. Her ears pricked up.
The Time Titan’s voice reverberated through the ship.
“You have caused a localized time fracture aboard this vessel. You have detonated an illegal chronal weapon, resulting in the deaths of several hundred future generations.”
“Aha!” said Cal. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He shook his head. “We didn’t do that.”
The Time Titan seemed to falter in his stride. “Sorry?”
“We didn’t do that. That wasn’t us.”
There was a pause.
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. I mean… I don’t think so,” Cal replied. He turned to the others. “Guys? Did we detonate an illegal whosamajig?”
Loren and Mech both shook their heads.
“Not that I know of,” Loren said.
Cal turned further. “Splurt?”
Splurt, who had been quietly passing the time by turning into some of Cal’s favorite childhood cartoon characters and was currently the fat one out of The Gummi Bears, also shook his head.
Cal looked around for Miz, then spotted her over by the DJ booth. She had one hand on the handle, the other held above her, claws extended. “Miz, did you…? Hey, what’s up?”
“DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” cried the Time Titan.
But it was too late. Miz tore the door from its frame, revealing an elderly man in a long red smock that came all the way down to the floor. Miz was as unfamiliar with Santa Claus as she was with inexplicably popular computer typefaces, otherwise she’d have noted another quite remarkable similarity in the way the old man looked.
He wore the same chunky chain around his neck as the giant figure outside, although his was partly covered by his long white beard. His eyes darted left and right beneath snow-colored eyebrows, and his hands wrung together as he shifted uncomfortably on the spot.
“Oh… bugger. Uh, I can explain!” said the man, and the Time Titan’s voice echoed through the ship. With a click, he deactivated a little electronic device attached to his throat. When he next spoke, it was in a voice that was substantially more subdued. “Might as well turn that off, I suppose. The game’s up.”
“Like… who the fonk are you?” Miz demanded. Cal, Mech and Loren appeared behind her, which made the old man shrink back a little.
“I am the Time Titan,” he said, with far less authority than he had just moments before. Outside, the enormous silver figure fizzled out of existence. The old man smiled anxiously. “Please… Don’t hurt me.”
TEN
THE TIME TITAN shuffled out of the DJ booth and immediately found himself surrounded by Mech, Loren, Cal, Miz and Gargamel out of The Smurfs.
“You’ve got five seconds to tell us what’s going on, old man, or Loren here will shoot you in the face,” Cal warned.
“What? I will not!”
Cal sighed. “Jesus. I’m trying to intimidate the guy, Loren. Can you just go along with it?”
Loren ignored him. “Look, no-one’s going to hurt you,” she said, bending forward a little to bring her face down closer to the old man’s. “We just want to know what’s going on.”
“I told you. I’m the Time Titan. You’ve broken chronal law, so… Well, you know. All that other stuff.” He looked around at them all reproachfully. “You’ve really made a terrible mess.”
“We didn’t break shizz,” Mech told him. “We just got here.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cal muttered. “Right, buddy?” He and Gargamel bumped fists.
“Exactly my point,”
said the Time Titan. He jabbed a bony finger in Cal’s direction. “He and… the green thing, they altered their time lines!”
The Time Titan regarded his accusatory finger, as if just noticing it for the first time, then quickly tucked it behind his back. “I mean… That sort of thing… Well, it’s not on. It’s lucky I rewound you when I did. Had you died, who knows what sort of disequilibrium that might have created? Who knows what the repercussions could have been?”
Cal’s eyes widened. “Wait! So you brought me back? You made me young again?”
“Indeed. I restored you to your prime. And not a moment too soon.”
“Hear that, Loren?” Cal said, firing off a lop-sided grin he considered particularly good. “To my prime.”
“I heard,” said Loren. “Congratulations.”
Cal winked, then turned back to the old man. “And so, I guess it was you who fixed Splurt, too?”
The Time Titan’s bushy eyebrows furrowed. “Pardon? Oh, him. No, there was nothing wrong with him. Or it. Or whatever it may be. His time line is like nothing I’ve ever seen.” He stared at Gargamel out of The Smurfs for a while, then shook his head. “I suspect he was just making himself look old in order to make you feel better.”
Cal looked round just as Splurt collapsed back into ball-shape and started to roll off. “You wait right there, mister,” he said, and Splurt squelched to a stop. “You’re telling me you made me look at all that horrible crusty shizz for nothing?”
Splurt shuddered, making him ripple like jello. Cal squatted beside him and rubbed what passed for his head. “Thanks. You little weirdo.”
With a rubbery boing, Splurt hopped up onto Cal’s shoulder just as Cal turned back to the old man. “Look, uh…”
“The Time Titan,” said the Time Titan.
“I can’t call you ‘the Time Titan’,” Cal told him.
“Why not? It’s my name.”
Miz tutted. “It’s a dumb name.”
“Well now, Miz, I wouldn’t say…” Cal began, but then he shrugged. “No, she’s right, it’s a dumb name. Besides, there’s no way that’s your actual name. You totally made that up.”
“I didn’t.”
“How about…?”
Cal looked the old man up and down, his eyes moving slowly from his curly crop of white hair, down past his rosy cheeks and wispy beard, and all the way to the bottom of his red smock.
“I think—” said the Time Titan, but Cal silenced him with a gesture.
“Hold on. I’m getting there,” said Cal.
Mech sighed and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “The man’s got a name. He told us his fonking name.”
“Tim,” Cal announced. “We’ll call you Tim. Tim the Time Titan. Time Titan Tim. Like it?”
The Time Titan shifted his weight on his feet. “Well, I mean…”
“Great!” Cal cheered. “That’s the spirit! Now sorry, Tim, what were you telling us?”
The newly-Christened Tim opened his mouth to say something, realized he had absolutely no idea what it was going to be, and so closed it again.
“He rewound you,” Loren said. “That’s what he said.”
“Right! Yes!” said Cal. He stepped forward and grabbed Tim’s hand, which made the old man flinch. Cal pumped the hand enthusiastically, like he was trying to draw water from a well. “I want to thank you for that, Tim. You’re a real lifesaver. And I mean that literally.”
Cal shrugged. “Would it have been nice if you’d showed up fifty years previously? You bet it would! But you got there in the end, and that’s what counts, right?”
“Uh… yes. Yes, I suppose it is,” said Tim. He looked down at his hand when Cal pulled his away, flexed the fingers a few times, then let it drop down by his side again. He regarded the rest of the group. “So you’re saying you didn’t detonate a chronal weapon on board this ship?”
“That’s exactly what we’re saying, Tim. I’m glad you picked up on that,” said Cal. “We don’t even know what a chronal weapon is. Do we?”
There was a general murmuring of agreement from the others that no, they didn’t know what it was.
“See?”
“Oh dear. Oh… buggeration,” Tim said, wincing behind his beard. “That means that whoever did set it off, well, they’re still out there. If they can do that today, there’s no saying what they could do tomorrow. Or yesterday, for that matter.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” said Cal. He slipped a hand around Tim’s shoulders. “As soon as I saw you I thought, ‘Now here’s a guy with a problem. Here’s a guy who could use our help. Our fast, efficient, surprisingly affordable help.”
“What? Oh. I’m not sure…”
“You want to find out who used the… what was it?”
“Chronal weapon,” said Tim. “Essentially, a time bomb.”
“Like one of those ones you see in cartoons?” asked Cal. “With the clock and the dynamite and all that jazz?”
Tim shook his head. “No. Like one of those ones that can fracture time itself.”
“Oh, that sort of time bomb. Gotcha,” said Cal.
Loren looked around the dance floor at all the people frozen, mid-step. “Is that what happened here?” she wondered. “Did time fracture?”
“I’m afraid so,” Tim confirmed. “The detonation was powerful, but extremely localized. It took me almost a full thirty minutes to detect it and trace its point of origin, then almost three whole seconds to travel here from across the galaxy.”
“Slacker,” said Cal, but no-one really paid him any attention.
“Three seconds?” Loren gasped.
Tim blushed, just a little. “I know. I took a wrong turning at the Homax belt. It’ll be a long time before I can live that one down.”
“So… what are you saying?” asked Mech. “Someone built a bomb that can break time? How the fonk can you break time? Time ain’t a thing.”
“Oh, it’s very much a thing,” said Tim. “In many ways, it’s the only thing. And it can be stretched and manipulated, or it can be broken completely.”
“And what happens then?” Loren asked.
“Everything. And nothing,” said Tim.
“Going to have to ask you to be a little more specific again there, pal,” said Cal. “Also, supplementary question – what happened to the big space guy outside?”
Tim looked mildly embarrassed, and shuffled awkwardly beneath his smock. “That was a projection. I brought matter forward from right after the formation of the universe, and shaped it into the figure you saw. I thought it would be… more impressive.”
“Are you kidding me?” said Cal, just a little accusingly. “Don’t you ever let me hear that kind of talk again, Timbo. You’re way more impressive than some enormous space baby.”
“Uh, he totally isn’t,” said Miz.
Cal titled his head left to right in a way that suggested he conceded the point. “I mean, she’s right. That’s crazy talk. The giant space guy was way more impressive. But still.” He gave Tim a playful punch on the shoulder. “You Wizard of Oz-ed us. Great job. We totally fell for that.”
“I didn’t,” Miz pointed out.
“No, she didn’t. And the rest of us had our suspicions, but still.” He winked. “Great job.”
Mech’s fingers whirred as they balled into fists. “Look, can we just get this shizz all explained away so we can get the fonk out of here? Tell us about the time bomb. What exactly does it do?”
“I’m not sure I can accurately explain,” said Tim.
Mech shrugged. “Fine. Then I’m out. If anyone needs me, I’ll be back at the ship not giving a fonk about any of this.”
“Wait,” said Tim.
Mech stopped. He wasn’t sure if it was his decision or if Tim had somehow forced him to, but he stopped.
Worry darted across the Time Titan’s face for a moment, before something firmer and more resolute moved in to replace it. “I can’t explain,” he said. “But perhaps I can show you.”
>
TIME PASSED. Lots of time, all at different speeds, and not necessarily in the right direction. It flowed like a rainbow of liquids, with all the colors following the same path, but all going at their own pace.
The red line trundled along at what Cal decided was ‘normal’ speed. If he looked at it directly, he got the sense of the seasons blending gradually into each other, and of years passing at exactly the rate he thought they should.
The strand next to it was orange. It whooshed by in a blur, moving so quickly it generated ripples of heat in the air around it and emitted a high-pitched buzzing like a wasp on Helium.
Where the yellow should have been was nothing but an empty gap. Tim explained the color was there, but it was moving too fast for Cal or the others to see. Personally, Cal thought this was bullshizz and the old man had forgotten to add it in, but he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The green moved much more slowly than the red, and slower still than the orange. Beside it, the blue was completely motionless, frozen like an icy river. Next to that, two different shades of purple were flowing backwards, one much more quickly than the other.
The rainbow pattern twisted around the ballroom, weaving between the motionless dancers and banking up over the heads of Cal and the others. Tim stood in the center of a colorful hoop, gesturing around him.
“This is the timestream,” he explained. “Or a very simplified version of it, at least. See that red line? That’s time flowing at its regular speed. Tick. Tick. Tick. Exactly as you’d expect.”
“Knew it,” Cal announced, looking pleased with himself. “I totally guessed that.”
Tim made a gesture with his hands and the rainbow grew larger. Splurt developed a hand and tried to touch the colors, then trembled with delight when his fingers passed straight through them.
“Notice the other strands? How they’re all physically beside one another, but flowing at different rates?” Tim continued. “Now imagine a billion of those. A billion billion. Shift from one strand to another and suddenly you’re moving faster, or slower, or backwards, even. It’s a highway. A highway through time.”
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 11