[2016] Timewarden

by Mark Jeffrey

  But the other mathematical models that Bantam liked predicted the entire trip back through time would only take minutes, during which Bantam would be safely encapsulated inside the twenty-eighth dimension.

  When he arrived in the past, he would re-enter normal space. His trajectory was planned such that he would re-appear above ground. There was no supercollider in 1944, after all; he couldn’t materialize inside solid rock.

  But nobody had the slightest clue what would happen next.

  The landing would be rough. The sudden appearance of a weird pod on a super-secure military base during World War II would be treated with extreme suspicion. In fact, everyone would probably assume it was a Nazi invasion.

  After landing on the base , Bantam’s mission was to locate General Coralbee. Coralbee’s son had informed Bantam of family secrets nobody could possibly know unless they were a Coralbee—or they were entrusted by a member of the Coralbee clan hiding a deep secret.

  The general had kept his true sexual orientation an absolute secret until his dying day. Sexual orientation did not matter much in the present day, but back in 1944, it was everything. The general never indulged a relationship or even a fling, deeming the war effort more important than his personal desires. He was an American soldier through and through. Compromising this was utterly unacceptable.

  Coralbee was wedded to America.

  Armed with this knowledge and other secrets, Bantam knew if he could gain access to Coralbee he could convince him he was from the future. And if he could do that, he could access the cure.

  Bantam carried along a number of whizbang electronic devices, including an iPhone and iPad. He planned to show these magical devices to the inhabitants of 1944 and wow them with his future-tech. Coralbee’s scientists would inform him this proof couldn’t be faked.

  There would be no other reasonable conclusion: Ben Bantam is from the future, they would say.

  After realizing they are all on the same team, they would hand over the cure. It might take months to convince them, but that didn’t matter: time was on his side. Bantam could leave 1944 years or decades later, so long as he arrived in the future near his departure time.

  There was a second problem, however: Once they believed he was from the future, they would want future weapons and knowledge to defeat the Nazis, but Bantam had been strictly instructed not to tell them one detail about the war.

  He replayed in his mind the carefully-worded phrase his superiors had given him: I’m here and I’m American, so you know things turn out well for the United States. But if I reveal more information than that, we all risk a different outcome. A highly undesirable outcome. I’m under orders from the future president of the United States that I must not disobey.

  Different schools of thought existed on whether the past could be changed. Some believed inevitability would always take hold: the past could not be altered. Any attempt to do so would introduce wild chance, so freak events way outside statistical probability would occur. Should Bantam attempt to kill Hitler, Bantam himself might be killed by a meteor to preserve the consistency of the timeline.

  The Butterfly Effect crowd, however, argued that this theory did not allow for free will, so it had to be incorrect. Bantam’s smallest actions might have profound effects on the future. The Butterfly Effect theorists had nearly succeeded in stopping the mission into the past, but the Shadow was proving too great a threat. What good did it serve to defeat the Nazis if the entire human race was wiped out less than a century later? They argued that if Bantam succeeded in returning with the cure, it would prove a better outcome than human extinction.

  The famous Volzstrang equations predicted a timewave traveling back through time could be made to bounce, reversing its temporal polarity, thus sending it traveling forward in time. Bantam’s capsule came equipped with a device that would bounce the timewave when he landed in 1944.

  Once that happened, his capsule could surf back to the present. Theoretically, all he had to do was hitch a ride, Shadow cure in hand, and bam!

  He was the savior of the world.

  But there was a flip side.

  If Bantam could not find his way back to the capsule—or he was prevented from doing so—he would bury the cure inside a unique box they had provided him with. The box had a special transponder that would be easily detectable in the future. A special low-powered battery would ensure a continuously broadcast signal over the decades in between.

  If this indeed happened, the transponder box was already buried on the base and they ought to be able to find it in advance of sending Bantam back in time. But repeated searches had turned up nothing.

  “T-2 minutes and counting, Bantam.”

  He studied the screen showing the tunnel behind him. In the curvature of the collider tunnel, he saw a faint blue crackling light.

  Here.

  It.

  Comes.

  The Volzstrang Wave was building.

  The sound of howling wind sent a tingle up his vertebrae.

  The voices on his headset became panicked.

  “What is it?” Ben asked, scrunching his eyes to focus on their voices.

  “Hang on, Ben! There’s a spike in the energy. Shut it the fuck down! Now! We didn’t see this coming. We don’t know if—”

  Static audio snow froze out the signal.

  “Hello?” Ben said. “Come in, Control. This is Bantam. Hello?”

  The wind sound grew louder. The blue crackling light grew brighter.

  Something is coming around the corner.

  A fireball of blue lightning, the wave Hoermann Volzstrang’s famous equations had predicted utterly filled the supercollider. It pushed at the edges of the tunnel, producing massive cracks instantly. Metallic soot fell with hunks of ceiling.

  Ice crashed through Bantam’s veins. The panic in the Control room combined with this sight made him taste copper.

  The Volzstrang Wave was ripping the supercollider apart as it rampaged forward.

  The wave was going to crush him.

  There was nothing he could do.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled.

  Bam! The capsule was lifted. Ben’s stomach dropped as he accelerated massively in the space of a second. The g-force would shred his body to ribbons at this sudden shift in velocity.

  Yet it didn’t.

  He sped up rapidly, and then tripled that.

  He did not feel the massive pressure on his lungs, the elephant he had felt in the fighter jet.

  This must be the twenty-eighth dimension. He shuddered.

  A jolt snapped him back to the present. The display screen indicated the capsule had already made ten revolutions around the Gaultier-Ross supercollider.

  Bantam glanced nervously around the interior of the capsule and saw no cracks. It appeared to be holding together.

  Well, that was something, anyway.

  Two minutes had passed, but the entire trip was only supposed to—

  Without warning, his stomach dropped as though he were riding a roller coaster.

  Peering at the monitor, he realized he was airborne, and no longer in the supercollider. He’d been thrown clear but all he saw were tumbling, blurry lights.

  The capsule hit the ground with a violent lurch and then rolled to a stop.

  Bantam caught his breath, allowing a minute for his heart to resume a semi-normal heartbeat. He unhooked his restraints and popped the door open, fully expecting a firetruck and ambulance to be racing toward him.

  Instead, he was greeted with a sight more bizarre than anything he could have predicted.

  Mother of All Whammies

  BEN BANTAM stumbled out of the capsule, barely able to stand.

  It had been morning only seconds ago but now evening light edged the horizon. He blinked at the dazzling full moon partially obscured by a shoulder of clouds.

  Perhaps more importantly, an army of men surrounded him.

  Unlike any army he had ever seen, these soldiers were clad in body arm
or. Large scales slid gracefully to accommodate their motions, giving the impression they were covered in soup bowls.

  And yet, this body armor resembled a Union uniform from the American Civil War: shiny buttons and buckles, yellow cords and gold trim on a deep-blue base. Their helmets were adorned with bits of silver and yellow feathers.

  They brandished silver and black guns. These, too, were odd, but there was no mistaking what the barrel and trigger implied.

  “Ho, there! More light! Get some naphtha on him!”

  A sharp hiss sounded, and another heated floodlight blinded Bantam.

  This is not MacLaren, Bantam thought with a sinking feeling. Nothing here resembled the pictures he’d studied. Their calculations had proved wrong after all.

  Was this a secret project? Perhaps records of these armored suits had been lost along with the cure for the Shadow?

  “Hands up!” someone barked. “You in the spacesuit! Hands in the air, or prepare for a proper dewskitch!”

  Spacesuit, Bantam mouthed. Interesting. They recognized what he was wearing, or thought they did.

  He tried to raise his hands but he was too weak. His legs wobbled, and he fell to the ground.

  The men jumped. “By perdition!” one of them snarled.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m . . . dizzy.” Bantam’s attempted yell tumbled out as a mumble. Surprised by the lack of power in his voice, Bantam felt like an insubstantial phantom.

  One of the army guys—the commander, it appeared—heard him. “What’s that you say? Dizzy? As in a scaldrum dodge, I’ll wager! Don’t move!”

  Exhausted, Bantam whispered, “Don’t shoot. I’m not your enemy.”

  “We’ll see, we’ll see,” the commander said dubiously. “Fitzhenry! Kindly remove his helmet! I want to see the face of this magsman!”

  Bantam sifted through the static hijacking his brain. Fitzhenry. Fitzhenry. Fitzhenry. There was no Fitzhenry stationed at Fort MacLaren in 1944. Memorizing the duty roster was yet another endless detail they’d made him study.

  Fitzhenry stepped forward. Several other men moved closer and stuffed their gun barrels in Bantam’s ribcage. “No funny business,” Fitzhenry warned. “How do I get this off?”

  “There’s a latch in the back,” Bantam said, his voice raspy. He was growing weaker. “You unhook it. There you go.”

  The pungent smell of burning fuel hit Bantam the moment the commander yanked off his helmet. He blinked at the lights blasting him from several directions.

  Despite this, he was awestruck by the massive structure looming near him: a tower of black, glass-like material, lit on all sides by strange floodlights. The stunningly sleek and slender tower stretched into the sky endlessly. High up beneath the winking stars, objects akin to blimps were docked to it.

  He felt like he was looking up at Jack’s legendary beanstalk.

  Impossible! The winds at those altitudes ought to have snapped it in half. And yet, here it was.

  A new man entered the yellow lights burning into Bantam from all sides. This tall, overweight man wore a more traditional army uniform. Orange-red hair sprung out from underneath his top hat, and his giant moustache curled wildly at the tips and stretched back to an equally impressive shock of red sideburns.

  “General Veerspike,” Fitzhenry said, rising and saluting.

  “Who is this?” Veerspike demanded.

  Bantam tried to answer, but his voice had given out. His limbs were made of uranium, and waves of blackness tugged at the edges of his swimming vision.

  “We don’t know,” Fitzhenry said. “We saw this thing”—Fitzhenry waved at the capsule—“come out of the sky and land. Then, he came out of it.”

  “Is that the short of it?” Veerspike asked, leaning down for a better look at Bantam. “He came over the wall, did he? A cracksman?”

  “Must have come over the wall,” Fitzhenry agreed. “But there are no reports of dirges or Aeroflots from the towers, sir.”

  “No matter. We’ll find out who he is. Bring him inside.”

  Fitzhenry and two other men dragged him upright. The world tilted and went dark as his eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  BANTAM AWOKE.

  Handcuffs tethered him to a chair in front of a wooden table. The funny taste in his mouth told him they had they given him something while he was under. Scop, maybe? He smacked his lips, unsure.

  He felt like a stick figure made of JELL-O, weakness permeating his muscles. The joyride on the Voltzstrang wave had tapped him out.

  He’d expected a cold, aluminum interrogation room but instead he saw a fire simmering in a sumptuous fireplace, and an extensive bookshelf lining the wall. Ornate couches and rugs punctuated the room.

  The door abruptly flew open. Three large men in Civil War-era uniforms entered. Two remained by the door. The third sported a twirled, old-timey moustache like a fisticuffs boxer. He glared at Bantam like he wanted to crack him across the lip.

  Moustache Man scowled and set down a leather-bound booklet.

  Here it comes, Bantam thought. He steeled himself for the beating. “Captain Benjamin Bantam. United States Army. Serial Number 8765266761,” he said.

  Moustache Man turned to leave the room, revealing a small thin man behind him. Moustache Man’s sheer bulk had obscured him.

  The smaller man climbed onto the chair in silence. His plaid outfit somehow complemented the monocle lodged in his eye socket. A little too big for his body, his mostly-bald head looked like a light bulb plugged into his neck.

  Full of ideas, no doubt, Bantam thought.

  Clack. Clack. Bantam couldn’t identify where the clacking was coming from. The man reached into his breast pocket and laid three lollipops on the table. Clack.

  After a moment, small man said, “Your pardon. You’ll be needing your hands back. Fitzhenry! Uncuff him.”

  Unexpectedly high-pitched little voice, thought Bantam.

  Bantam recognized the guard from scant moments last night.

  Was it last night? Or have I been out longer?

  The guard set his hands free.Bantam stared at the short man.

  “Captain Benjamin Bantam, United States Army,” the man repeated. “My name is Dr. Hardin. Won’t you have a lolly?”

  Bantam raised an eyebrow and leaned forward.

  “Your choice. I prefer the Honeysuckle Dazzler. It’s the middle one, that’s why I made it the middle one. But the Velvet Cinnamon Snap is quite good, as is the Nightberry Cream Delight.”

  “I’ll take the Velvet.”

  Confection-as-art: hand crafted, over-sized, and magnificent. He removed the wrapper, and the pungent aroma of cinnamon soaked the air.

  “Ah!” Hardin cried, eyes misting with unmistakable joy. “I had forgotten that smell. I believe you have made the right choice.” He stared intently at the two remaining lollipops. “Let me see then.”

  His eyes were as intense as if he were performing differential equations in his head.

  “Nightberry Cream Delight. You’ve inspired me, Benjamin Bantam, United States Army. I daresay you have indeed! I will expand my culinary horizons, educate my palette beyond the narrow confines within which I have tarried for too long. Rusted are my taste buds. Rusted and wasted on repetition! But no more!”

  Bantam gripped his lollipop, but didn’t lick it.

  Hardin unwrapped his treat to an olfactory explosion of blackberry fruitiness. The doctor savored it. Then, his eyes popped open.

  “Ben Bantam. Aren’t you going to try your lolly? You don’t think I’m trying to poison you, do you? Heavens, no.” He leaned in close. “You’re trying to earn our trust, am I right? Since we outnumber you, shouldn’t you start by trusting us first?”

  Bantam nodded slowly.

  “And besides,” Hardin continued, “If we were monsters, we would have killed you in your sleep. We’re far too curious to kill you. Killing you wouldn’t quench the questions that spin and brew in our cortexes, no.”

  Hardin suddenly dove into hi
s lollipop with abandon. When he came up for air minutes later, he announced: “Now, magic!”

  Magic?

  “Magic!” Hardin repeated as he produced a deck of cards. “Actual stage magic, performed by a human, not an automaton. Well, half an automaton, to be fair. But I don’t use that part of me at all in doing the magic. There’s no secret compartment in my arm. Or maybe there is. I’m not telling.”

  Bantam blinked again. “In your arm?”

  “Your pardon. Here. Nothing up my sleeve, if you will.”

  Hardin rolled back his suit jacket and white under shirt to reveal a see-through mechanical forearm. No skin, only glass. Hardin wiggled his gloved fingers, and the glass surface rippled.

  Clear rubber, Bantam corrected himself. Finely crafted ball bearings and pistons articulated the digits and wrist movements as gracefully as an organic arm.

  Well, nearly so. Although the mechanical parts moved inside a lubricating liquid-packed gel, they still clacked around as they moved.

  Was this a trick to disorient him? Prosthetic limbs of that sort were not even close to possible.

  “Lost it,” Hardin said glumly, nodding at the mechanical right arm. “Experiment that went afoul. But we’ll get to that. First. Pick a card.”

  Am I in the future?

  Chewing curses at his ignorance, Bantam pulled a card from the deck.

  “Don’t show me! But do tell me, Benjamin Bantam, United States Army: where are you stationed?”

  “Fort MacLaren,” Bantam said.

  “That’s curious.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because this is Fort MacLaren,” Hardin said.

  “What?” Bantam chuckled with surprise.

  “You didn’t know. You genuinely didn’t know,” Hardin replied studying him. “I can tell about people. I’m good at it.”

  “No. I didn’t. If this place is MacLaren, I can save us all a lot of time. I need to speak with General Coralbee. He can clear this up.”

  “Your card,” Hardin said. “Slide it back into the deck. Anywhere.” Bantam did so. Hardin shuffled the deck fairly, as far as Bantam could see, and he placed the deck behind his back. In a jiffy, he produced the ten of spades. “Is this your card, sir?”