“Gotcha,” said Cal. “By which I mean I’m sure one of us follows and can explain it to the rest of us later. What’s it got to do with this place?”
“This is the time stream out there,” said Tim, gesturing to the window. “And this… This is the time stream in here.”
The colors fragmented and whizzed off across the walls, floor and ceiling. At first, Cal thought someone must’ve turned on the DJ booth’s lights, but then he realized he was still looking at the rainbow, except now it was in thousands of little pieces all scattered throughout the ballroom. Some of the pieces intersected, creating new bands of color that flowed at several different speeds at once, and pulsed angrily as if they weren’t best pleased about it.
Whenever Cal looked at any of those new colors, his skin crawled. They were… not right. That was all he knew for sure. Looking at them dredged up some ancient and primal uneasiness from deep down in his gut.
There were things in there. Things from long ago, and still to come. Things that would never exist – should never exist – and yet at the same time, would. Somehow, they would.
A pressure began to build in Cal’s head, like a knot of pain behind his eyes. He looked away from those wrong colors, but he could still see, hear them, feel them pulsating and twisting and howling and—
“Turn it off,” said Loren. From her voice, and the way her blue skin was turning faintly green, Cal knew she’d felt the same thing he had.
Tim made a tickling gesture with the fingers of both hands. The colors blinked out, one by one, leaving the room much darker than it had felt before. For a long time, nobody spoke. Although Splurt did briefly become Mighty Mouse.
“So that’s what a time bomb does, huh?” said Cal.
“It, like, what? Puts colors everywhere?” asked Miz. “What’s the problem?”
Loren rolled her eyes. “I think you missed the point.”
“Yeah? Well I think you missed the point!” Miz retorted.
“How does that even make sense?”
“How do you even make sense?” said Miz, then she nodded her satisfaction and crossed her arms, the argument apparently won.
“It’s fortunate the explosion was confined to this vessel,” Tim explained. “Had it been larger – had the time stream beyond the ship’s shielding been affected – then the damage could have been insurmountable.”
Cal frowned. “Meaning?”
“Meaning all of time could have shattered.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning everything would stop happening. And yet, paradoxically, everything would happen at the same time.”
Cal nodded and whistled quietly.
“Uh-huh,” he said. Then: “Meaning…?”
“Meaning it’d be bad motherfonking news,” Mech snapped. He turned to Tim. “Right?”
“Yes. It would be ‘bad motherfonking news’, as you so rightly say.” He waved a hand in Cal’s direction. “It was unfortunate you stumbled upon a fragment like you did.”
“Unfortunate? I spent my whole life living on… Wait. There were monsters. Or monster-aliens. Or alien… I don’t know. There were these big scary things. Where did they come from?”
“From here. On the ship,” said Tim. “When the bomb detonated, you see, all those passengers were affected differently. Those you see here, unmoving, are frozen. They’re the blue line you saw.”
He rapped his knuckles on the head of a wedding guest.
“Trapped in a billionth of a second. Unmoving. Unaware.” A frown troubled his brow. “I mean, I hope they’re unaware.”
He shook his head, chasing the thought away, then gestured around him at the empty air. “Meanwhile, some of the others took that orange line you saw. The one that flowed much faster. That was the line you found yourself on,” he said, nodding in Cal’s direction. “On that timeline, hundreds of generations were born and died in a matter of seconds. The things you saw – the monsters – were the results of cross-breeding, in-breeding, and ten and a half minutes of vastly accelerated evolution.”
“So what are you saying? They were the passengers?” asked Cal, feeling a twinge of guilt over having killed them all.
“No. They were the distant descendants of the passengers. The passengers themselves have been dead for millennia. On their time line, anyway. Just under quarter of an hour in this one.”
“Oh,” said Cal. He brightened. “Oh, well that’s fine, then. Fonk ‘em.”
“What about the other lines?” asked Mech. “The purples, or whatever? Those were going backwards. Did anyone wind up in one of those?”
Tim nodded tactfully. “They did. Yes,” he said.
“Then where are they?” asked Mech. “How come we don’t see them?”
“The, uh, physical form is not designed to go backward in time. It’s not natural, you see? It’s designed to go forward in time, usually – but not always – at a steady, regular pace. It’s what we expect, and what we have evolved to do. Going backwards presents tremendous dangers, even to me.”
“So, what happened to them?” asked Loren.
“They all blew up.”
“They blew up?”
“Exploded into tiny bits,” Tim explained. “Then those bits exploded into tinier bits, then those bits into even tinier bits… And so on and so forth. You get the idea.”
“Why didn’t I blow up?” Cal asked. “When you rewound me, or whatever? Not that I’m complaining.”
“Luck,” Tim admitted. “There was a very good chance you would, but since you were already a third of a second away from death, I thought it worth the risk.”
He smoothed down his beard and darted his eyes around the group. “I wouldn’t really have done that stuff I said earlier,” he admitted. “You know, erase your history, cast you into a void of endless suffering, etcetera. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Miz had wandered over to another of the frozen figures. It was a young girl dressed proudly in a shiny sequined silver dress. She wore matching shoes, and the outfit really set off the purple of her skin. She was smiling and had clearly been bouncing with excitement when her time line had stopped.
The girl’s face was turned upwards. Miz followed her gaze and saw hundreds of colorful spheres up near the ceiling, all of them paused, mid-fall.
“Like, what’ll happen to all these guys?” Miz asked. “I mean, not that I care, but can you, like, restart them, or whatever?”
Tim’s expression answered before his voice did. “I’m afraid not. The damage is too great. Everything is too far gone.”
“Then how come you could save this shizznod?” asked Mech, indicating Cal.
“Well no need to sound so ungrateful about it!” Cal protested.
“He was not here when the chronal weapon detonated. He was not affected directly. These people, this ship... They took the full brunt. I’m afraid they’re lost. Everyone’s lost,” Tim said. To his credit, he seemed genuinely upset by what he was saying. “All that remains is to collapse the ship’s time line, so as to prevent the risk of it contaminating others.”
“Meaning…?” Cal asked again.
“Meaning I will collapse its past, its present and its future in on one another. It will be erased from existence. Erased from time. It’s already unstable, even I should be able to manage that.”
Cal, Loren and Mech all nodded slowly, despite none of them having any idea what the old coot was talking about. Miz slouched her weight on one leg, deliberately not looking at the excited little girl in the silver dress and matching shoes.
“So… hold on,” said Cal. “If the ship is erased from time, won’t that mean that we didn’t come to it? That none of this stuff happened?”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Tim, looking almost amused at the suggestion. “You came here. Your experiences are indelibly imprinted on your mind. Erasing the ship from time will not wipe the memories from your head. It will merely prevent anyone else traveling back to interact with it from the future, o
r anyone traveling forward to interact with it from further in the past.”
“Oh. Well… great. That’s much clearer. That’s pretty much what I expected,” said Cal, then he shot Loren a sideways look and gave a little shrug.
“You have a ship, yes?” said Tim.
“We do,” Loren confirmed.
“Then you should probably get to it,” Tim told them. “I have already begun the process of chronal collapse. Soon, this ship won’t ever have existed.”
“Right,” said Cal.
“Unless you’ve been here, in which case it will have.”
“Uh-huh,” said Cal.
“But only while you were aboard it.”
“Got it. Makes sense,” Cal lied.
He reached forward, caught Tim’s hand, and pumped it vigorously. “So, this has been great. Really informative, and I want to thank you for stopping me dying of old age.”
Tim smiled behind his beard. “Think nothing of it. Happy to help.”
“No, but I mean seriously. I feel great! I owe you one.”
“I restored you to your physical prime,” Tim said. “Let’s call it compensation for the inconvenience you experienced.”
“Sounds like a deal!” said Cal. “Oh, but one thing – are there likely to be any, you know, ill effects of spending fifty or so years trapped on the same ship with just Splurt for company? Mentally, or whatever? Asking for a friend.”
Tim’s smile became a little less convincing. “Well… it’s hard to say. Rewinding you restored your brain – reformatted it, if you will – so while you may remember many of the things you experienced here, there shouldn’t be any strong negative or positive feelings connected to those events. All the experience, with none of the emotional baggage.”
“Great!” Cal said. “I think this means I’m officially the wisest and most experienced member of the team! You know, not counting Splurt, because fonk knows how old he is.”
Loren jabbed a thumb in Mech’s direction. “What about him? He’s hundreds of years old.”
“Oh. Shizz, yeah. I forgot about that,” said Cal. He tapped his finger against his chin. “Although, he’s had his memory wiped, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count. Fonk it. Let’s just all agree that I’m the wisest and most experienced, then reassess if any other evidence presents itself.” He flashed a grin at the others. “Sound good?”
“I ain’t agreeing to that,” said Mech.
Cal gave an apologetic sort of shrug. “Well, like I just said, I’m the wisest and most experienced, so… overruled. Sorry, Mech. Tough break.”
He about-turned before Mech could say any more and swept towards the door. “Now, let’s get back to the ship. Believe it or not, I kind of want to say hello to Kevin. I actually kind of missed the sound of his voice.”
CAL STOOD ON THE BRIDGE, his mouth hanging open, his gaze locked firmly on the ceiling above.
“What do you mean I could have spoken to you at any time?” he demanded.
“Well… just that, sir,” Kevin intoned. “I was hooked into the Odyssey’s communications systems and, as you may recall, I and this vessel are both rather experimental in nature. By accelerating my processing power up to maximum, I was able to perceive you and Master Splurt’s accelerated time lines. It was quite fun to watch, actually.”
“Quite fun to…” Cal shook his head. “Why didn’t you say something?!”
“I seem to recall that shortly before you disembarked you told me to ‘shut up’ sir,” Kevin replied.
Cal almost choked. “Not for fifty fonking years!”
“You didn’t specify, sir,” Kevin said. “Perhaps that’s something to keep in mind for the future. Not that I’m blaming you, you understand. I’m sure there are lessons we can both take away from the experience.”
“But—”
“Especially you.”
The Untitled rumbled as Loren fired up the thrusters. Cal wanted to say more to Kevin – a lot fonking more – but he settled for just glaring angrily for a few seconds, then he hurried to take his seat before Loren crashed them into a wall.
The chair felt familiar but slightly awkward when Cal lowered himself into it, like a chance meeting with an old fiancée. It squeaked as he wriggled from side to side, trying to find a comfortable position.
“You OK?” asked Loren, looking back over her shoulder.
“Fine. Just… It’s weird, you know? Being back. It’s like—”
Draped across her chair, Miz yawned theatrically. “I mean, like, no offence, but how long are you going to keep going on about this stuff?”
“I’ve barely mentioned it!” Cal protested.
Miz snorted. “Tsh. Sure. You keep telling yourself that. You got old. You died. You’re back. We get it. Move on.”
Up front, Mech raised his eyebrows. “Hell, girl, even I think that’s cold. The man’s been through a lot.”
“A lot,” Cal agreed.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t milk it,” Mech told him.
Miz tutted. “Whatever. I just think—”
She swallowed the rest of the sentence as the Untitled shot backwards, clipped the edge of the landing bay floor, and backflipped out into space.
“Jesus!” Cal yelped, his knuckles turning white on his arm rests as the ship spiraled away from the Odyssey. “What was that?! What the fonk just happened?”
Loren didn’t turn around.
“Loren? Was that… Tell me that wasn’t you.”
“I thought the landing brake was on,” Loren admitted.
“God, I did not miss that,” Cal wheezed. On screen, he caught a glimpse of the Odyssey, before it rolled away again as the Untitled flipped.
When the cruiser next appeared, something had happened to it. It was almost formless, like it was caught between a number of different shapes at the same time.
By the time the Untitled had completed another spin, the Binto Odyssey had never existed.
Kind of.
“Well, that’s that, I guess,” said Cal in the silence that followed.
“Wait. What’s that?” said Mech, pointing ahead. The ship rolled backwards away from whatever it was, and they had to wait until it had done another full revolution before they saw what he’d spotted.
It was a glass. A glass that looked very similar to the one Loren had dropped in the food court.
“Smashdown,” Cal whispered. Draped over his shoulders, Splurt shuddered at the mention of the word. “Jesus, can nothing destroy that fonking thing?” Cal wondered.
There was a clunk as the glass collided with the front of the ship. Cal watched in silence as it rolled all the way up the view screen, then floated off into space, completely undamaged.
“Son of a…” he mumbled. He briefly contemplated having Kevin shoot the damn thing with the cannons, but there was a more pressing issue to deal with first. “Hey, Loren, not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re currently somersaulting through space. Maybe you could do something about that when you get a chance. No rush.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Loren.
“Although, ideally, before I throw up.”
“Just give me a—”
“Too late!” Cal announced. Clamping a hand over his mouth he jumped up from his chair. The seatbelt had something to say about that, though, and quickly slammed him back down.
“Nng!”
Splurt grew a tendril and stabbed it at the belt release. Cal mumbled some sort of thanks then sprinted out into the main corridor, bouncing and staggering despite the artificial gravity.
The bathroom door flew open at his approach, but it was too late. As the door slid open, Cal’s guts unleashed their full fury. A thick soup of half-digested space vegetable was forcibly ejected from his mouth in a concentrated spray of vomit.
To Cal’s surprise, there was someone else in the bathroom. To their surprise, they suddenly found themselves plastered with a torrent of warm puke.
“Well,” said the Time Titan, scooping Cal’s stomach contents from hi
s eyes and flicking a semi-digested piece of space carrot off his beard. “I suppose I really should’ve seen that coming.”
ELEVEN
THE TIME TITAN explained that Cal shouldn’t worry, as he could simply rewind his personal time line to a point where he hadn’t just been projectile vomited on, and everything would be fine.
He could do that, but he wouldn’t, because mucking around with the time stream – any time stream – usually brought with it some quite cataclysmic repercussions. Instead, he had a shower, borrowed a pair of pants and a Philadelphia Eagles shirt from Cal – both of which were several sizes too large – and then joined the crew on the bridge.
The Untitled had stopped spinning and was now hanging more or less completely stationary in space, since no-one had any real idea where to go or what to do next. Everyone – even Miz – turned as Tim shuffled onto the bridge in his oversized clothes, his hair and beard all puffed out and frizzy from being dried.
“Hello again,” Tim said. “That’s better. Nice shower you have. Very powerful. Gets into all the nooks and crannies. Right up there.”
Miz turned her chair to the front again, went back to picking her fingernails, and pretended she hadn’t just heard any of that.
“Uh, yeah. Well that’s a horrifyingly visual image,” said Cal. “Now, uh… You’re on our ship.”
Tim nodded and smiled. “Yes.”
Cal nodded and smiled back. “Aaaand you’re on our ship because…?”
“You said you could help me,” Tim reminded him. A shadow of anxiety passed across his face. “You can help me. Yes?”
“Help you? Well, I mean… Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure we can help you. Right, guys?” said Cal.
“Help him do what?” Mech asked.
“Help you do what?” asked Cal, feeling the need to pass on the message.
“Well… you know.”
Cal turned to Mech. “You know.”
“Why are you repeating what we say? I can hear the man just fine,” Mech said. He addressed Tim directly. “No, we don’t know.”
“We don’t know,” Cal confirmed.
“What do you want us to do?” Mech finished.
Space Team: The Time Titan of Tomorrow Page 12