[2016] Timewarden

by Mark Jeffrey

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Twice Upon A Time

  The Volzstrang Wave

  Mother of All Whammies

  Cliff Cleveland, Astronaut

  The Day of the Red Sun

  Sabotage Most Foul!

  A Journey By AetherLev

  Gaspar the Great

  The Phlogistonian

  The Great Clanker Battle

  Mobius

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About The Author

  Thrill to a tale of a yesterday that never was, and yet was!

  The story of a boy and a girl, the worlds between them,

  And a choice impossible to make.

  TIMEWARDEN

  A Smallish Novel By

  Mark Jeffrey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Mark Jeffrey

  ISBN: 0985884509

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9858845-0-5

  All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Mark Jeffrey

  Follow Mark Jeffrey on Twitter: @markjeffrey

  More information: markjeffrey.net

  Twice Upon a Time

  THE DAY Benjamin Bantam had waited for all his life was here at last.

  Crisp, light-blue skies filled with marbled clouds drifted in small whirls. A perfect sun-soaked wind keened off nearby Mirror Lake.

  Perfect. It was exactly as he recalled.

  As Bantam sat on the park bench, he glanced over his shoulder at Fort MacLaren, the massive army base. Somewhere beyond the barbed wire lay the top secret Gaultier-Ross supercollider. The thought of it charging made his scalp tingle.

  It would have been charging for weeks by now. Remember?

  He laughed at the faded memory, inevitable for a man of his advanced age.

  Somewhere close but beneath the ground, a great circular chamber several miles in diameter was purring with enriched tachyon energy, building up to release a Volzstrang Wave in a single massive detonation

  “Excuse me. Is your name Benjamin Bantam?”

  A young woman of twenty-four stared down at him. Her Facebook photos had prepared him for the resemblance—obvious even beneath her surgical mask—but he was shocked by uncanny similarity of her voice.

  For a long moment, Bantam could not speak. His mind tumbled with split-second jabs and cross-cuts of another time and place. Emotions he had assumed long-forgotten suddenly rushed to the surface in an overwhelming flood of love and pain. Or aether and iron, as she would have said.

  Still, he didn’t dare falter. Not with so much at stake. He couldn’t afford to spook her into running away.

  Bantam stood and held out his hand. “Yes, I’m Benjamin. Thank you for coming.”

  The girl recoiled from his outstretched hand. Her germaphobia was understandable; blackpox had destroyed one-third of the planet.

  Blackpox, commonly known as the Shadow, was an especially violent strain of smallpox that produced huge black fleshy boils. The disease soiled the blood of the infected, turning it into dark ink. The dead produced a viscous flow from their mouth, as if they’d vomited oil immediately before expiring.

  Extremely contagious and lethal, the Shadow had depopulated entire continents within weeks. Endless miles of ghost cities existed in China and India. In the United States, the Shadow had wreaked a trail of black blood from Washington to Oregon. In San Francisco, the death toll had reached nearly 90 percent. The Northeast was largely spared, but as of late, a fresh outbreak was blooming in New York City. Another eruption of death was imminent.

  Bantam forced a tight smile and dropped his hand. “Sorry. I always forget. Hard to get used to it again.”

  She seemed embarrassed. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m Sabine Portis. But you already knew that.”

  Bantam surveyed her face. Unlike her distant great-grandmother, Sabine was a goth girl. She’d dyed her hair a rare shade of midnight with a pencil-thin streak of blue. Several silver crosses hung from her too-white neck. A sunken, surly expression creased her face.

  “Please. Have a seat,” Bantam said.

  She sat, and they stared at each other for a moment.

  “Well, I came. Like you asked.” She fidgeted, twirling her hair around her finger mindlessly.

  Bantam knew she’d only come because Bantam had offered to foot her college tuition bill, not because she knew him. He’d messaged her on Facebook, saying it was imperative to talk.

  She noticed him staring. Her eyes darted. “You don’t like the way I dress. Neither did my mom. Be the strange you wish to see in the world, is what I always say.”

  “Ghandi?”

  “The Joker,” she replied.

  Normally, she would never come to a weird meeting like this. But the pox had taken her parents, leaving her destitute. Her boyfriend’s parents were pox-slain as well, and his meager savings were about to run dry.

  Sensing her unease, Bantam handed her a check. “You needn’t worry. I’m keeping my promise. Not only will your college loans be paid, but you will be taken care of financially for the rest of your life. One condition: you listen to my story.”

  Sabine gasped when she read the amount on the check. “Is this real?”

  Bantam chuckled. “I’ve done well in the stock market, Miss Portis. I bet on Apple when they nearly went out of business in the nineties. I was one of the first angel investors in several well-known internet companies. I’m a limited partner in several of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture firms. Of course, that was before the blackpox came and blew the market to hell. But the check you hold in your hand is good. It’s all yours.”

  Sabine was shaking. “All I have to do is listen to you? Why?”

  Bantam grinned. “Because I assure you, you won’t think I’m telling the truth. Not at first. You’ll think you’ve wasted your time but you’ll stay because of that check in your hand. By the end it will make sense, and you’ll realize everything I’ve told you is true.”

  She glanced up nervously. “I’m listening.”

  “Let me get the recorder first.” Bantam pulled out his iPhone. “I’m going to tell this story only once. Want to make sure I get it all down.”

  Sabine grinned. “I didn’t know someone your age even knew how to use an iPhone.”

  Bantam looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I grew up with this. Do you know what it was like, waiting all this time for iPhones to be invented again? Going back to paper maps? No GPS, no nothing? It was insanity! I had to use rotary dial phones again. No call-waiting. I’d forgotten what a busy signal sounded like.”

  Sabine blinked.

  “See? There we go. This is what you’re getting paid for,” Bantam said. “To sit there and think I’m babbling. At least at first. What would you say if I told you that you and I were the same age?”

  “Umm . . . ”

  “We were born in the same year, anyway. I’m twenty-four. In real time. I’ve never been past the day that is today. I’ve been waiting for it all my life. This whole time, I’ve known exactly what was going to happen in the world every single day. I’d wake up and say, Today’s the day Kennedy is shot. Or Today’s the day of the Challenger explosion. Or Today’s the day of the dotcom meltdown.

  “But I have absolutely no idea what will happen tomorrow. For the first time ever! I’m terrified—and I love it—and I’m terrified. I’m not used to surprises these days. Tomorrow is an absolute mystery, but at least I’ll move forward in time for the first time in—”

  “You said you k
new my grandmother,” Sabine said impatiently.

  Bantam’s entire demeanor shifted. Her words hit him deeply.

  Bantam swallowed thickly. “Your great-grandmother. Rachelle Archenstone. An extraordinary person. Wonderfully beautiful.”

  “I never knew her. She died before I was born.”

  “Yes,” Bantam whispered reverently. “I know.”

  “Explain,” Sabine snapped. “How did you supposedly know my great-grandma if you’re supposedly my age?”

  “Because there are two of me,” Bantam said. “Pretty soon there will only be one of me—the one here now.” Bantam jabbed his thumb at Fort MacLaren. “See that behind me? That’s why I asked you to meet me here. You need to see for yourself what happens when they make the Volzstrang wave. They didn’t know it would put on such a light show outside the collider.”

  He laughed, and continued, “My twenty-four-year-old self is in that building. One of the best soldiers the army has, I’ll have you know. Young Bantam is in there, deep underground, being strapped into the capsule this second. Very soon they will fire up the world’s largest supercollider and produce a Volzstrang wave.

  “The Volzstrang wave can propel a capsule containing a living person back through time, and it can be surfed with great precision. The young Ben Bantam will surf the wave back to 1944. Humanity will have achieved time travel for the first time.”

  Sabine’s expression indicated she didn’t believe any of it. “So the army is sending people back through time.” She rolled her eyes. “Why?”

  “Blackpox,” Bantam said. “Everybody knows that but almost nobody knows the Shadow was created as a weapon during World War II, right here at Fort MacLaren. They planned to win the war by infecting all the Nazis.

  “But before that happened, the war ended. There was no need to use the weaponized, highly lethal smallpox anymore. It was stored on a shelf somewhere and forgotten until three years ago, when it somehow got loose and started killing half the planet.”

  Sabine raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

  He continued, “The other part nobody knows? Back in 1944, there was a cure.”

  “Right,” Sabine said. “Why make a plague if you might catch it yourself.”

  “Exactly,” Bantam replied.

  “So they sent you back in time to get the cure?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you were the first person to go back in time?”

  Bantam nodded. “One small step for maniacs.”

  Sabine stewed on this. “How do you know you were the first?”

  “They told me, and they gawked at me like I was about to fry inside that capsule.”

  Sabine laughed and made a buzzing sound, like a bug hitting an electric zapper.

  “Another guy posted on the Internet back in 2000. A soldier named John Titor. Said there was a time-travel branch of the military in his time, 2036. He had traveled back to the seventies to find a schematic for an old IBM computer part, claiming it was critical in the future. Anyway, he posted online that he was stopping off in 2000 on his way back to his own time. Sort of sightseeing. But I think he was full of crap.”

  “Really,” Sabine said, clearly amused by Bantam’s story.

  “His time-travel technology didn’t sound right. Two rotating singularities mounted in a car? Sound familiar? Why post all that stuff online with your real name? Especially if you’re a real time traveler? Someone might come along and kill your young self to see if that erases your Internet posts.”

  “Well, would it?”

  Bantam winced. “I’m getting to that.”

  “So you’re my age, and you were born when I was born. What music did you listen to?”

  Bantam snorted a laugh. “I listened to Planet Furious. But I’ll bet your speed is more Dandelion Smash. I’m guessing your favorite tunes are ‘Tantricity’, ‘Sea Mountain’, and ‘Catatonic Leopard Print.’ Am I close?”

  Sabine whistled, impressed. “You nailed it.”

  “I figured you for the glowsticks-and-lollipops crowd.”

  “Not anymore,” Sabine said, scraping the black nail polish off her thumb nail.

  “That music sounds like a broken washing machine. But I’ve got Furious on my iPod. Or at least, it was. Back now. No iPods in 1944.” Bantam scrunched his face.

  “You were saying?”

  Bantam’s eyes snapped back to the present. “The first time I was in today, on that base behind us, about to travel back through time.”

  The Volzstrang Wave

  INSIDE THE Gaultier-Ross supercollider, a young, twenty-four-year-old Ben Bantam ratcheted up his courage, waiting for the Volzstrang wave to send him back to 1944. He lay strapped to the seat inside the cramped time capsule. One side of the supercollider was considerably larger than the side that faced out of the circumference. The wave would form, pick up the capsule, and carry it around and around the supercollider at blindingly terrific speeds.

  The chrononaut was covered from head to toe in a white lead suit, and he wore a helmet with a lead-lined clear plastic visor. Volzstrang radiation was thought to be deadly, though no one had ever produced a wave of this size before.

  If everything went well, Ben Bantam would become the world’s first time traveler.

  He was excited beyond belief.

  He wanted to be known as the guy who found the cure to the Shadow and saved the world. He would be an American hero. He would be the Beatles, Steve Jobs, Luke Skywalker, Buzz Aldrin and Harry Potter all rolled into one.

  Sure, this mission was classified but it would eventually be made public. Movies. Books. Tours. Ticker-tape parades.

  Women, women, and more women!

  With great power comes great fun in abusing that great power. He laughed at his own joke, yanking on the seat belt for the twentieth time.

  Bantam, a patriot who wanted to serve his country, also had a deep and abiding love for America. Women were not his only motivation. He believed the United States was the last best hope for humanity.

  The previous weekend Bantam and his friend Rocco had gone out for one last furlough before the big mission. At the end of the night, Bantam had his fortune told by a Europa-Romani.

  She was a third-generation psychic, she had explained. Her grandmother had immigrated at the turn of the twentieth century and lived in New York before dying suddenly in 1912. Her granddaughter, the Europa-Romani sitting before Bantam, still possessed a severe and smoky beauty, despite her advancing age.

  The tarot cards flopped onto the table in an odd arrangement. Romani’s eyes danced over them with a flicker. Her generous mouth whispered calculations of the soul. Bantam watched, wondering through the blur of beer whether she might be interested in him.

  “You will meet the love of your life!” the Europa-Romani called out. She smiled, her eyes madly wide. She clearly enjoyed delivering happy news.

  But then, the cards pulled her eyes back down.

  “You will not meet the love of your life,” she said, sadness and confusion filling her gaze.

  Bantam glanced at Rocco. They almost burst out laughing. Bantam was about to demand his money back from this charlatan, this terrible witch, when she said—

  “You will kill billions of people.” Her eyes stabbed at him like daggers, dripping with disgust. And again, some gravity of the soul pulled her eyes down to the cards.

  “You will save billions of people.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bantam slurred. “They can’t both be true. At least lie well, fer Chrissssakes. I’ve already said I’d pay.”

  But Europa-Romani wasn’t done. Speaking like a machine gun, she said, “Yet both are true. You have two futures, both as real and palpable as the nose on your miserable face. Your curse will be monotony. Nothing will surprise you. Your life will have no surprises. How horrible for you!”

  She jumped up from her seat and shooed him away. “What are you? Begone, you terrible thing! Avaunt! Leave! Never come back!”

  Romani hurled ca
ndles, cards, and curses at Bantam and Rocco as though they were the worst people living on the planet.

  Bantam shook his head, throwing the memory from his mind. “Hey, Control. We got that bad power relay figured out yet?” he asked.

  “No. Sit tight, Bantam. Do something to keep your mind occupied.”

  Bantam glanced around the cramped capsule. “I could rearrange the furniture in here, I guess. I like good Wang Chung.”

  Control gargled out a laugh.

  “Listen. Take your time,” Bantam continued. “No whammies, please. Last thing I need on this mission is whammies.”

  “You got it, no whammies,” Control said. And then more somberly: “All our hopes are riding with you.”

  All our hopes. Bantam gulped.

  His mission was to retrieve a cure for the Shadow. Holy. Freaking. Shit. This was not about skirts, it was about saving lives. Billions of lives.

  Billions? Wasn’t that the word the Europa-Romani had used?

  “When you get back,” Control said. “We’re buying you dinner. Whatever you want. Wherever you want. We’re making reservations now. What do you want?”

  Bantam smiled. “Steak,” he said, nearly tasting it. “At Mastro’s. I want it rare. I’m talking super-rare. Cow sushi.”

  Laughter filled his ears. “Hey, champ, I think we got it fixed. How you feeling? Having second thoughts?”

  “Not on your life,” Bantam replied. And he meant it.

  “When you pee your pants—and you will once that Volzstrang wave smacks you upside the ass—remember your suit was designed to handle that.”

  “Fat chance,” Bantam replied with a grin.

  “T-10 minutes, Bantam. The wave is building.”

  “Bring it on, Control. I’m ready to surf.”

  Due to the mathematical models that predicted Volzstrang’s radiation to be far more intense than anyone had guessed, Bantam knew half the technicians in Control thought he would cook in the capsule like a cat in a microwave