[2016] Timewarden

by Mark Jeffrey

It must be me because I am of this world. I am erasing myself, voluntarily, so that the earth might be a better place. That is my right!

  But had it been you in the capsule … well, then you would have simply been a world-murderer, killing our world to bring back your own. Afterwards, you could not have lived with yourself. Do not lie! I am now only but a letter in your hand and still, from an Age away, I see the bitter protest forming in your eye.

  It makes me laugh.

  That is so very like you. Gallant, to the end. You would have endured the self-recrimination for me. How lovely and wondrous you are, Benjamin Bantam. How I think about your hand on my check, the way you look into my eyes, the feel of your well-formed body.

  Are you shocked that I would write such a thing? A Lady such as I? Well let us say you have had an influence upon me that I dare show only now that I know I will not have to face you after you have read this!

  You see? There are indeed some advantages to our newfound situation.

  Do not weep for me. I lived a life of fire with you, a life that I relished, brief though it was. Strange that I found such a deep and lovely happiness with you during a time of such ferocious horror.

  But strange was the chance that brought us together.

  And now you have read my last.

  Goodbye, my love.

  -- Rachelle Archenstone

  When he finished, Bantam handed the other envelope to Sabine. “This is the work of your great-grandmother. It’s only fitting you, her heir, be the one to present it with me.”

  “Present it with you?” Sabine said. “Present it where?”

  Bantam pointed the envelope toward Fort MacLaren. “Present it there, of course.”

  The ground began shaking violently. A strange blue-and-yellow plasma-halo danced across the surface of the earth like a will-o’-wisp. Short, sharp, shocks of lightning sizzled between ground and cloud.

  Sabine looked fearful. “Don’t worry,” Bantam said. “That’s the other me, going back in time. It’ll be over in a—”

  The shaking and the light show stopped.

  Bantam smile. “So it begins. Come. Let’s deliver the cure at last. Let’s complete my mission, you and I together.”

  THE END

  And here is where our Tale ends! You should stop here.

  Everything makes sense. You have a sense of closure. Really, it is for the best that you stop reading now.

  Of course, there is a little more …

  But I am warning you, Gentle Reader!

  IF you ADVANCE to the next few pages, you do so AT YOUR OWN PERIL!

  But BE YOU SO INTREPID, then

  READ ON! READ ON!

  Epilogue

  AS BENJAMIN BANTAM and Sabine Portis, the great-granddaughter of Rachelle Archenstone, approached the gates of MacLaren Army Base, klaxons began howling. Men in emergency vehicles buzzed behind the guard gate, frantic. Acrid black smoke rose in a dense plume in the middle distance.

  "What's going on?" Sabine asked. "What's wrong?"

  "It's the Gaultier-Ross supercollider," Bantam explained. "It's on fire right now. Remember? The Volzstrang Wave ripped it to ribbons when it sent me back."

  Ah, Sabine nodded. She'd nearly forgotten the first part of Bantam's story. Not really believing it at the time, she'd dismissed it and not really listened. But now, with a shock, she realized she was actually entering the impossible tale she'd just heard.

  She was no longer a spectator, no longer someone merely listening to the story: she was becoming a part of the events themselves.

  The ruins of a time machine -- a real, true, actual time machine -- lay beneath her feet. And now it was destroyed, just as Bantam had described it happening in advance.

  Bantam approached the guard booth. The sentinel waved at him angrily, other hand on his holster, shouting, "Sir! Get out of here! We're on emergency lockdown!"

  Bantam only gave a beatific smile in return. Calmly, opening his palms, he shouted into the noise, "I know! I am the cause of your emergency!"

  The guard blinked. What?

  "I destroyed the Gaultier-Ross supercollider!"

  Immediately, the guard drew his weapon, eyes wide, adrenalin surging. Sabine screamed.

  "Both of you! Hands where I can see them!" Shakily, Sabine raised her arms, one hand holding a notebook.

  "Drop it!”

  The precious notebook, the most valuable thing in the world. It was written by Rachelle Archenstone in an alternate past, and it contained the cure for the Shadow.

  And Sabine let it go. It flapped to the dirt.

  Three guards swarmed out of the booth, weapons drawn. "On your knees!" Bantam complied slowly, his old knees creaking with pain as he did so. But he didn't care. He didn't care! Everything was a surprise! He had no idea what was going to happen next. The thrill overpowered him for a moment: he hadn't had the capacity for surprise in decades. Then, by degrees, he recalled why he was here.

  "The notebook," Bantam said, nodding his head at the guards. "You'll want it. As evidence that I caused the supercollider to explode -- which again, I freely admit!"

  The very existence of the supercollider was a strict military secret. Among other reasons, parts of it actually curved outside of the grounds of MacLaren -- some of it underneath Mirror Lake, for starters. Some of it even snaked beneath civilian residential areas, the inhabitants of which would have an absolute fit if they knew it was there.

  "You're under military arrest for suspicion of terrorism," one guard said, placing a plastic tie around Bantam's wrists.

  Bantam old-man-coughed a laugh. "This isn't the first time I've been charged with terrorism at MacLaren. It's getting to be a habit."

  THEY WERE escorted to a military jail and locked in different cells. There, they waited for several hours. The sirens and the yelling and frantic din outside their rooms conveyed the panic and disarray that infected the base. Nobody was processing them -- it seemed they had become lost in all the confusion. But at last, the din died down and two MP's removed Bantam to an interrogation room.

  Unlike the sumptuous room Hardin had interrogated him in a far-off civilized age that had ceased to be, this room was cold and aluminum with lit with a buzzing neon light that seemed to shiver with madness.

  That far-off world was better, Bantam thought ruefully.

  But it was mostly better because that world contained Rachelle Archenstone. The version of her who knew him -- and loved him.

  "What's your name?" a buzzcut with an MP band asked him. Bantam looked him up and down, sized him up. Immediately Bantam could tell that this guy was A Someone. Good. This would save time.

  "Captain Benjamin Bantam, United States Army," Bantam replied evenly.

  The buzzcut's eyes glinted. Ah, he knows the name, Bantam thought. He's got clearance on the time travel mission.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "On this day, several hours ago, I was sent back in time. My mission was to retrieve a cure for the Shadow and return here with it. Today, I have done exactly that. The girl who you arrested with me has a notebook. That notebook contains the cure."

  The MP stared at him for a moment, unsure what to ask next. In a million years, he had never expected this sort of answer.

  "I do apologize for my ... ah, un-military age and appearance: you see, I had to take the long way here. My return ride was destroyed." Destroyed. And with it, Rachelle Archenstone, who had bravely erased herself from history to prevent a thousand years of Nazi rule. He winced with momentary pain at the memory.

  The MP took a different tack. "You said you destroyed the supercollider. What did you mean by that?"

  "The Gaultier-Ross supercollider was filled with a Volzstrang Wave of immense power. I was in a capsule within the collider. The Wave tore the collider apart as it passed; but it was contained just enough to send me -- and the capsule -- back in time. So yes, in a sense, I was the one who destroyed your supercollider."

  The MP snorted out a breath when Bantam mentione
d the word Volzstrang Wave. He didn't have much of a poker face.

  "I am sorry," Bantam continued. "I did not mean to destroy government property. But I do think the cure for the Shadow ought to be recompense enough."

  "You say you're Bantam," the MP said. "Can you --"

  "You took my DNA samples, fingerprints, hair, blood, fingernail shavings, God knows what else I don't even want to think about, before I left. Take them all again. They'll prove I'm the same man. Benjamin Bantam is not lying dead in a pile of rubble deep in the earth as Control probably thinks right about now. He's here, sitting here, right now, in front of you. Take as much time as you like to verify this to your satisfaction. The only thing, the one thing, that I ask, is that you make the girl -- her name is Sabine Portis, by the way -- make Sabine comfortable while you verify this. She is the heir of a heroine: her great-grandmother's notebook will save billions. Least you can do it treat her well. I brought her here so that she could experience the moment of delivering the notebook, as is her birthright. Let's make that a pleasant experience, hmm?"

  The MP nodded. "Of course."

  "Oh. And take the notebook now. Copy it and get to work on an antidote, so that no time is wasted. Every moment we sit here, thousands more will die because of our delay. There has already been too much suffering. And then it return it to her so that she may formally present it with a hero's welcome."

  OVER THE NEXT few hours, doctors poked and prodded Bantam. Blood samples were analyzed, x-rays were taken. Another device measured the amount of Volzstrang radiation that had saturated Bantam's cells: if he'd really traveled back in time, he'd have a permanent background level forever marking in his very bones.

  Then Bantam received a visitor he did not expect. When he appeared in the doorway, Bantam could not help but smile.

  "Control," Bantam said. It was Dan Winston, the man on the microphone continuously in his ear during all the practice runs, simulations and the final mission itself.

  Dan nodded. "So. They tell me it's really you. But there's one last test. My test."

  Bantam nodded. And then, realization flooded his mind. "Ah. Yes. You owe me dinner. Steak. At Mastro's. I'm going to collect you know ... whether I can actually eat it or not, you're going to buy it."

  Dan's eyes popped in amazement. He stepped closer, scrutinizing Bantam's face for the first time, mere inches away. "No one else could know that but you. My God ... where have you been all this time?"

  "Hello Dan," Bantam said. "Yes it's me. I've been here, living in the shadows. Staying out of history's way. We made quite a mess of things when I went back, you know. But ... well, let's just say someone else got it all back on track. She's the real hero of the story."

  "It must be quite a story," Dan said. "They're going to let me hear you tell it."

  "Tell it?"

  "Yes. You're about to be debriefed. I told them I knew something only you and I knew -- I could verify beyond all the medical tests whether you were really you or not. And they upped my clearance so I could hear whatever it is you have to tell us."

  "Oh! The notebook! Did they --"

  "Yes! Yes, of course they did!" Dan said. "They're working on manufacturing the cure right now at the CDC. They're going to human trials immediately -- there is no shortage of volunteers."

  "And Sabine. Where is Sabine?"

  "Resting," Dan said. "She's been given a suite, she's not in a cell anymore. There's still a guard on her, but her quarters have been significantly improved. She's fine."

  "It works," Bantam breathed. "I swear to you, the cure for the Shadow works. Those people will be well again!"

  Dan nodded. "I believe you. Hell, I'll believe just about anything right now!"

  "Well, if you're going to hear this tale, you're going to have to believe in a lot of impossible things ... and I daresay a lot more than six before breakfast!"

  AND SO Bantam told the tale in a large conference room to about thirty people. Sabine sat at his side, the original copy of the notebook with the cure for the Shadow in her hands. Most of the other attendees were Army, some were NSA and some were Homeland Security. There was a video feed that went out to God only knew who else -- seven or eight cameras were pointed at Bantam as he spoke into multiple microphones.

  He told the tale of an alternate world, one where there was no electricity. A world where alternate technologies had arisen: some based on steam, others on material sciences far beyond anything in his own world, and still others based on gears and cogs and contraptions of every sort. The Helux gas that powered airships and flying growlers of every shape and size.

  He told of how this world did not understand the Nazi threat until it was too late -- and how he and his friends had been able to drive the Nazis back into the sea during the Pearl Harbor of this alternate world: the Great Clanker Battle of New York.

  And he told of the lovely Rachelle Archenstone, his love, his heart ... who had given her life to reverse the effects of the Volzstrang Wave and erase her own Nazi-infested timeline ... restoring it to Bantam's own, where Germany had been defeated.

  The shock on the faces of the officials in the room at the revelation that there had been some interim time when some of them had almost certainly been 'erased' was visible on their faces. Bantam could see that they feared this outcome almost as much as the Shadow itself. Worried muttering broke out whenever Bantam raised this subject -- along with his own guilt in accidentally creating 'unpeople'.

  There were questions. Many questions. The session stretched on for nine hours or so. At one point, Bantam noticed that the Generals kept looking up at a mirror set into the near wall as he spoke. There were probably some CIA guys back there or something, Bantam thought. Or psychologists. Or psychiatrists. He could never recall which was the correct term. But they were probably watching him, analyzing his sanity, asking whether he was senile or whether he was even telling the full truth.

  But Bantam did tell the truth. He was as truthful as he could be about absolutely everything. He omitted nothing.

  When he was done, an older man in a suit rose. He introduced himself as Agent Kovington of Homeland Security. Buttoning his jacket and smoothing it out as he stood, he said, "That is quite a tale, Captain Bantam. Quite a tale indeed. And despite all the medical tests and the evidence you have provided here, I would still be hard pressed to believe it. It's just too whimsical, too impossible. I'd say you were not really being straight with us."

  Bantam glanced at the mirror, and a half second too late realizing Kovington had caught him doing so. He smirked slightly.

  "I would say that," Kovington continued. "Except I've heard this exact same tale once before. And your tale corroborates the other equally ludicrous tale to such a degree that I can only conclude that this is the truth."

  Much of the room gasped, including Bantam. What --? What could that possibly mean?

  Kovington spoke to the mirror. "You can come in now."

  Bantam's old heart thudded. Could it somehow ... somehow be Rachelle? But no. She was here already in this timeline. Her alternate version had died. There couldn't be two of her somehow, could there?

  He hardly dared to think it. He pushed the hope aside.

  In walked a small man with a lightbulb shaped bald head. He wore an outfit ridiculous in this timeline and place, but not in the age of aether from whence he came.

  It was Doctor Hardin. He looked exactly as Bantam recalled -- he had not aged at all.

  Impossible!

  How could he be here?

  "Benjamin Bantam," Hardin said. "Ah, forgive me for the shock I know you must be feeling. Please do remain seated and I will explain. It is really I, as I am sure you are questioning your sanity and evidence of your own eyes. There is a perfectly logical, sane explanation for my presence." Then, he lifted his eyes to the room. "Hello! Hello one and all. My name is Doctor Hardin and I know you've just heard a tale wherein I was a character, and I've now stepped from the pages of that fairyland of the imagination and into your
reality! Ha! That's quite a shocker -- a shocker indeed. Now. Does anyone have any of those marvelous Hershey bars? They are really one of the best things about your world!"

  Kovington rolled his eyes. In response to the glare of a General next to him, he said, "Yes. He's always like that. He never shuts up. You just have to let him go on until he gets to the point."

  "I ... I do," Sabine said, reaching into her purse and handing him the delicious chocolate bar he so craved. He snapped it from her hand greedily.

  "Ah! Thank you, Miss Sabine! And your voice sounds just like Rachelle's! It is really amazing!"

  "Hardin!" Kovington snapped. "Explain the rest of it."

  "Ah yes. Of course, of course." He snapped off a bit of chocolate and ate as he spoke. "I was not captured by General Veerspike and killed, as it now seems apparent that you believed that I had been. Instead, after you had been spirited away by Cliff Cleveland and Rachelle, Mr. Bantam, I hid in a private underground lab that no one but I knew existed. I knew Veerspike would come for me, of course, I was no fool! And I did not wish to die.

  "For weeks, I hid, even after General Veerspike had been dispatched. After all, I had been fooled once by a Nazi spy: who knew how many more of them were on the base? I had been caught flat-footed the first time: I resolved this would not happen again. So I decided that I would conceal my presence on the base indefinitely.

  "To only one did I reveal my presence: to Doctor Hoermann Volzstrang. And I bade him to swear an oath that he should not break ever to not reveal this secret.

  "Together, we constructed a mechanism that I might inhabit, a coggler's work of wizardry: an exoskeleton of an Army soldier in full armor. It — ah — compensated for my height with a very clever set of gearing false legs and arms. I could wear this extraordinary device and work it from within, allowing me to walk around the base at will, undetected. I knew enough of the passwords and what would fool the enlisted men into not questioning me, most believing me to be a superior officer they had simply never met before.