Tyler passed by the door to his office a minute after the earthquake had ended. “That was a good one, huh? What do you think? A five?”
Oliver would have said the earthquake felt more like a 14, but he knew the scale didn’t go that high. “Yeah.”
Tyler took a good look at him. “Long night, buddy?”
“There’s a reason I don’t drink. I guess I needed a reminder.”
Tyler laughed. “You seen Sally? She’s not in yet.”
“Not since last night.”
Tyler’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, really? You two? Wow. I can’t say I never saw you guys getting together, but I didn’t think it’d actually happen…”
“Not like that,” Oliver snapped. Then what Tyler had just said registered in the part of his brain that was still capable of processing language. “Wait, what? Me and Sally?”
“Why not?” Seven suddenly brushed past Tyler, making a beeline for Artemis’s office. Tyler watched him go, then turned back to Oliver. “Well? Why not?”
“I don’t…” Oliver stammered. “It never even occurred to me.”
“Not even once? You guys are friends. She’s beautiful. You’re…kinda funny. Neither of you is seeing anyone. You get my point here?”
“I don’t know if we’re actually friends,” Oliver said. “I think she tolerates me. And even if there was more to it than that…”
Seven rushed past Tyler again, this time heading for his lab. Tyler watched curiously. “What’s gotten into him?”
“Who knows what ever gets into him?”
“Fair point. Anyway, even if there was more to it than that?”
“Well, we work together, for one thing. I can’t imagine it would be a good idea. Besides, she’s…”
“What?” Tyler asked. “Not your type?”
“It’s not that. It’s more that…she’s absolutely terrifying.”
“You never struck me as someone who has a problem with strong women.”
“Strong women, no, but Sally’s like the Godzilla of women.”
Tyler shrugged. “She’s pretty fierce, I’ll give you that. I think you’d be a cute couple, though. You’d analyze things, she’d break them.”
“I think you’re totally insane.”
Tyler smirked. “You up for lunch today? Something nice and greasy?”
Oliver’s stomach flip-flopped. “Oh, you bastard.” Food was the last thing he wanted to think about right now. Greasy food, even less.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help it. You want an aspirin? There’s a first-aid kit in the…” Seven rushed past again, this time nearly bowling Tyler over. “Hey!”
Oliver felt his stomach starting to sway again. A moment later he realized it wasn’t his stomach; it was everything else. “Another earthquake?” he asked. Their building was moving again, and looking through his window he could see several other skyscrapers were, as well. There also appeared to be some kind of shimmer in the air, like he might see when there was a gas leak, but that could have just been his eyes rebelling against the sunlight.
“Maybe it’s the big one,” Tyler said, putting his hand on the wall. “Are we supposed to get under the desks or something?”
“If this building goes down I don’t think being under a desk is going to help that much.”
Oliver’s phone chimed and Artemis’s voice came over the intercom. “My office. Now!”
“You want me too, boss?” Tyler asked.
“I want everyone. Have you seen Sally? She’s not responding.”
“Not yet,” Tyler said. “We’ll be right there.”
Oliver and Tyler headed for Artemis’s office. Seven was already there, tablet in hand. The building hadn’t stopped swaying yet. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. “Should we be evacuating?” Oliver asked.
“Or getting under our desks?” Tyler chimed in.
“It doesn’t matter,” Artemis said, studying the readout on Seven’s tablet. “This isn’t an earthquake.”
Oliver blinked. “It’s not? Then what the hell is it? Did a bomb go off?”
“It’s a timequake,” Seven said.
“What the hell is a…” Oliver began.
“It’s like an earthquake, but with time,” Seven said.
“Oh. Of course it is.” Oliver looked at Tyler. “Do you know what that means? I kinda need the simple version.”
“That was the simple version,” Seven said. “We’re in a hurry, so I chose easy words you’d be able to understand.”
“I don’t think it worked,” Tyler said. “I don’t know what it means, either.”
“Oh for god’s sake,” Seven said. “A timequake is…”
“There,” Artemis said, tapping the tablet screen. “That’s the epicenter. It’s coming from Vault 3.”
“How?” Seven asked. “Nobody could have gotten in there. Turrets are online but dormant, no security alerts. It’s green across the board.”
Oliver looked through Artemis’s window. “Um…guys? You should probably take a look at this.”
Artemis’s window faced the Embarcadero where an outdoor park adjacent to the waterfront was often used for a farmer’s market. Oliver liked to pick up fresh vegetables to take home after work, and for the ever-hungry Tyler it was like an open-air candy store. Today it looked a bit different, though. Twelve cyborgs could be seen marching up Market Street, outfitted in metallic armor similar to that of the cyborg that had attacked them in the parking garage. Each appeared to have a weapon held at the ready, although from this distance it was hard to tell exactly what they were. Oddly, only about half the people on the streets outside seemed to be able to see them. Those were moving out of the way, while everyone else went about their business as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Admittedly, one did develop a tendency to ignore the unusual after a few weeks of living in San Francisco, but this was going beyond the pale.
“We’re under attack?” Tyler asked. “How is that even possible?”
“The attack already happened,” Artemis said. “Reality is being rewritten around it. We’re just catching up to it now.” She turned to Seven. “How far back?”
Seven studied his tablet, sweeping his fingers over it and pressing the touchpad almost more quickly than Oliver could see. “Fourteen months, give or take. A little more time and I could pinpoint it, but time is something we’re out of.”
“How?” Tyler asked. “How is this happening?”
“Vault 3?” Oliver asked. “You said that’s the, what, the epicenter?”
Outside the skyscraper at One Market Street shimmered and then disappeared into thin air. “Jesus!” Tyler screamed.
“Never mind,” Artemis said. “It wasn’t there anymore. It hasn’t been there for a long time. What about Vault 3, Oliver?”
“Well, if it’s a timequake, doesn’t it make sense that it would have something to do with the time machine? That seems kind of obvious to me.”
Artemis stared at him. “What do you know about the time machine?”
“Sally showed it to me. She said we weren’t allowed to use it because of changing the past and all that.”
“Oh, god,” Seven said. “She could not possibly have been that stupid.”
“We have a time machine?” Tyler asked. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”
“Mr. Jones, this is very important,” Artemis said. “Did Sally tell you the time machine was in working order?”
“Of course,” Oliver said. “What would be the point of a time machine that didn’t work?” He looked around. “Where is Sally, anyway?”
“No doubt in Vault 3. Or she was. Where she is now I could only imagine, but given the events outside, I strongly doubt she survived her attempt.” She sighed deeply. “Damn her. No, damn me. I should have seen this coming.”
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Tyler asked.
Artemis pointed at Oliver. “She knew you could change things, Mr. Jones. If you believed something strongly enough, you could
make it real.”
“Believed what?”
“The time machine hasn’t worked since 1945,” Seven said. “The quantum drive was destroyed and even if we wanted to fix it, we don’t have the materials to make a new one.”
The pieces were beginning to fit into place now. “She told me it worked,” Oliver said. “It was all she could talk about the last week. It was all I could even think about. Then she came over last night and…I think she might have drugged me.”
“No,” Tyler said.
“Just enough to get my mind wandering like it had…” he looked at Artemis. “I heard the water. Like when I made Jeffrey talk, and when I wiped out the Kalatari. It was the same noise I heard those times.”
“You changed reality,” Artemis nodded. “You believed the time machine worked, and so now it does work. And Sally turned it on.”
“She went back fourteen months,” Seven said. “Before the mirror was broken. Before the war ended. She went home.”
Oliver looked out the window. More buildings along the Embarcadero had vanished, and new ones of a different design had appeared in their places. They were tall, silvery metal structures, with pulsating blue lines running from base to tip. Oliver had never seen construction like that before. Well, he had, but only in science fiction movies. It looked like the cityscape of an alien metropolis in a distant galaxy.
“She tried to change what she did,” Tyler said. “Well, of course she did. She didn’t want to be a murderer anymore.” He sighed. “God damn it, Sally.”
“That much she succeeded at,” Artemis said. “The cyborgs were not destroyed. Unfortunately, it appears that the cure was not deployed, either. There can be little doubt they conquered their own world and then invaded ours. They would have discovered the mirror, of course. It appears they did not meet with much resistance.”
“What do we do?” Oliver asked.
“Nothing,” Artemis said. “It has already happened. This timeline will be gone in a few more moments and we will find ourselves in a new one. You won’t remember ever meeting me, Mr. Jones.”
“What about us?” Tyler asked. “Me and Seven?”
“Difficult to say. I would have been aware of the fracture shortly after it happened and activated our emergency protocol for this kind of situation.”
“The house on Filbert Street,” Tyler nodded. “Can it correct the timeline?”
“No,” Seven said, “but it will correct us. From there we’ll work out a plan. But you and I won’t know what’s happened. Only Artemis will. If we’re not with her we’ll have no idea…”
“Do not fear,” Artemis said. “I will find you.” She looked around the room. “I will find all of you. I promise.”
The walls of the office shimmered and Oliver suddenly found he could see through them. “But what about you? Won’t you change, too?”
Artemis smiled wistfully at him. “I never change, Mr. Jones.”
The office shimmered again, and then it was gone. For an instant Oliver found himself suspended in midair, then the world around him went black, and everything was gone.
Chapter 12
Oliver Jones had spent many idle moments at work daydreaming about what it would be like if he had a more interesting life. Stock analysis at the small hedge fund where he worked paid the bills, and he was quite good at it, but there was nothing particularly glamorous about studying Excel spreadsheets and crunching percentages all day. Not that Oliver needed glamour. Just a little adventure, once in a while. Some excitement. Certainly that shouldn’t have been too much to ask.
He couldn’t help but think the cyborg invasion of Earth was really overdoing it.
The first of them had arrived in San Francisco just over six months ago. Two hundred cyborgs had marched through a portal in Haight-Ashbury and begun “conversions” almost immediately. The conversion process consisted of injecting nanobots into a victim’s bloodstream, where they began to replicate themselves. In short order they took over their host’s higher brain functions. Oliver had seen the process more times than he cared to count. It looked agonizing, with the victims writhing on the ground as if their bodies were being controlled by a demented puppeteer. The screaming never lasted more than an hour or so, which was roughly how long the initial stages of conversion took. After that, cyborgs no longer expressed pain. Nor did they express any emotions at all.
The later stages, in which they would grow armor and one of their eyes began to glow blue, could take several days. Oliver was sure the internal organs were modified as well, in ways he didn’t want to imagine. It was something he preferred not to think about.
Oliver considered himself something of an expert on the process. He was, to the best of his knowledge, the only human alive it had never worked on.
The cyborgs had taken San Francisco’s financial district on the second day of the invasion. Oliver and his coworkers had spent the night hiding out in their office, waiting for the National Guard, or the army, or anyone to come and get them out of there. The cyborgs had come to their building instead, moving floor by floor, converting everyone they could find. Oliver had been huddled in a closet when they dragged him out, injected nanobots into his neck, and dropped him to the floor to undergo the conversion process alongside the rest of his screaming, writhing coworkers. But Oliver hadn’t screamed. The injection had been painful, and he’d felt a hot flash afterward, but then nothing. When his converted former coworkers stood up and headed for the building’s stairs to join their new comrades in their work, Oliver had just sat there staring at them. Eventually another cyborg passed by and injected him again, but exactly the same thing happened as before. There was a brief moment of heat, as if he’d developed a sudden fever, and then it was gone. After a third injection failed two baffled cyborgs had lifted him up and carried him downstairs, where he was quickly transported to a medical center near the Presidio for study.
Three months later the cyborgs had conquered most of the western United States, which was when they ran into a wall in the form of nearly every country on Earth with a military. If one good thing had come out of the cyborg invasion, Oliver thought, it was that nearly every other war being fought on the planet came to a quick end. Religious divisions and disputes over territory and resources became irrelevant when faced with a threat on this new scale. It was, in one sense, a great day for humanity. On the other hand, millions were either dead or had been converted, and there was no end in sight. The cyborgs had been unable to advance past the Mississippi river, and the nanobot-filled cruise missiles they fired east had been unable to provide them with any headway. The cyborgs believed that their teleportation technology would eventually turn the tide. It was what had gotten them to San Francisco in the first place, but where they had apparently found moving world-to-world easy, point-to-point travel had been for whatever reason much more difficult to master.
Oliver knew all of this because the cyborg scientists that had been studying him since his capture had been happy to tell him about it. They saw no reason not to. He was under constant watch in case he tried to escape, and even if he did, he had nowhere to go. The last human running around San Francisco wouldn’t go undetected for very long, and the nearest human resistance group with any teeth operated out of the hills of San Diego County, eight hours to the south by freeway. Even if Oliver managed to steal a car, he doubted he’d make it a tenth of the way there.
Oliver had long since lost count of how many times he’d been injected with nanobots. The cyborg scientists had studied the results and determined that, through a process they couldn’t understand, Oliver’s blood reacted to the injections by heating up and burning the tiny machines to cinders. How this was possible without his superheated blood turning Oliver himself into a pillar of fire was a mystery. He never felt anything other than uncomfortably warm for a few moments, and once his blood was purged of the machine invaders it returned to normal.
The tests continued, however. The cyborgs seemed to have no end to the experi
ments they wanted to run on him. This was advantageous to Oliver only in that it meant they wanted to keep him alive and healthy. He was fed the same nutrient paste the cyborgs ate, which tasted foul but was surprisingly filling, was allowed to exercise in a fenced-off area outside, and was even provided with a television and DVDs to watch in his room. Armed guards were never more than a few feet away, but it beat the alternative. Oliver imagined they’d find a way to convert him one day, and then a machine would take over his brain and he wouldn’t care anymore. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.
Oliver was watching a British comedy show about a hapless secret agent when one of the cyborg scientists entered his room, syringe in hand. Two guards accompanied him, as was the usual. “Oliver Jones, we require a blood sample.”
Oliver nodded. This scientist’s designation number was SCI-3422XB. Each of the cyborgs had a designation that identified their function and other information to other cyborgs, although Oliver didn’t know what all of the other information meant. He’d picked up that SCI meant scientist and SOL meant soldier, but that was about it.
SCI-3422XB wore a white lab coat over his armor, which made him look more than a little ridiculous. Oliver had asked about it once, given that there was no logical reason the cyborg needed to wear it, and SCI-3422XB had told him that it was intended to make Oliver feel more at ease with him. It came closer to making Oliver laugh, but he wasn’t going to complain. If they really wanted to make him feel at ease, though, they could start by getting rid of the armed guards outside of his room.
“I’m not going to have any blood left one of these days,” Oliver said, pushing up the sleeve on his blue hospital gown.
“That will not be a problem,” the cyborg said. “We feed and hydrate you so that you will continue to produce more.” He plunged the syringe into Oliver’s arm. Oliver had stopped wincing at the less-than-gentle contact months ago. Being poked and prodded was so old hat now he hardly noticed anymore.
Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) Page 9