“Slaughter! Keep them busy—I’ll be right back!”
As my people unlimbered their sidearms and blasted away at the surprisingly resilient directors, I thought orders for an emergency transfer and, thanks to my temporary calibration, was instantly granted my travel request. In the same instant I finished saying the word “back,” I reappeared within the wilds of New Jersey, specifically within the walls of the bowling stadium in which I had watched Peasley die.
Throwing a wall of cancellation over my former self and the crowd, I approached Peasley and screamed at him;
“You know you’re dying—right?” When he nodded, I shouted, “I can’t stop it, it’s already happened, but I can tell you why. If you don’t want anyone else to die this way—listen to me!”
And, as Peasley began to crumple, I gave him what I hoped would be an awakening moment. As quickly as I could, as simply, I revealed to him the secrets of time travel—that it existed, that it was real, and what it meant for all humanity.
As I disappeared once more, I watch the dying face of Quentin Peasley experience epiphany.
Then, just as fast as I had left, in the instant I disappeared, I reappeared as well. I actually felt myself leaving the spot in which I arrived, almost knocking myself over. My people were just pulling their blasters, were just pulling on the triggers I had watched them pull a moment earlier when I signalled them again to stand down. There was no longer any need. Thomas Thorn had told me how to stop them.
I had extrapolated, it true, but I’d been correct. After the rich taste of their scientist’s soul, they had turned their machine on hungering for more wonderful rushes like him. I don’t think they had found any. Thorn’s begrudging admission that even Peasley had had something to offer made me think—
What if his mind had held wonder?
What if he had been experiencing that rarest of human moments, an explosive instant of epiphany when they gobbled down his soul? I had hoped for something like the reaction any other kind of drug addict experiences when after many highly cut doses they were suddenly gifted with the pure stuff. Sure enough, Thorn and his fellows were all helpless with fascination, overwhelmed with their stolen moment of self-satisfaction.
Knowing it would not do to waste my hard-won advantage, I stepped to where Thorn still lie tangled with the others. Placing my foot upon his neck, I looked into his eyes, and said;
“I sentence you, Thomas Gadius Thorn, to death by disbursement. Your atoms will be scattered. Your fortunes will be forfeit. You are ended.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. His drool-leaking mouth smiled at me, his eyes promising he was still filled with surprises too ample for me to overcome. Gesturing for me to come closer, his weak voice croaked past my heel to tell me;
“Oh, Mr. Rambler, you weren’t paying attention. I told you the G-9 worked across dimensions. When it gathered unto us Mr. Peasley, don’t you know, it gathered unto us, all the Mr. Peasleys there are. Just as it gave us all the Cardinellis, and all of all the others, plucked from every dimension, across all the expanses…”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning, Mr. Rambler, that you’re too late. So you eliminate me. What does it matter? Across every dimension, a billion, billion other Thomas Thorns know what I know now. They all understand time travel now. They all want to taste what I have tasted. They shall flood here to stop you. You and your Proven Time are doomed! We win, Mr. Rambler—”
His laughter became a thing unbearable to hear. Shifting my foot just a bit, I brought my calibrator to bear on his forehead. As I did so, the rest of my force picked a target and did the same. Looking into his eyes one last time, I said;
“Same thing, Thorn,” I told him. “When I said you were ended, I meant it. Say ‘goodbye,’ Tommy.”
And then, I acknowledged calibration and thought Thomas Gadius Thorn out of existence. All the Thomas Gadius Thorns. All billion billion of them. Every one of them. The Jehovah badge glowed a deeper purple second after second as around the room the directors of zVz were winked out of existence everywhere and when they existed.
The next day, across all the dimensions where there had been a Thomas Thorn, where the gravity well had been invented and a corporation to administer its existence had come into being, those who were not in charge of the company would discover they had no idea who was. They would have a product no one would have ever claimed to have invented. Hopefully they would use it to better ends.
Stumbling to the nearest chair, I fell into it, too numb to feel. My second-in-command came to me, holding open a containment box. I nodded, giving her the go-ahead to remove my Jehovah circuits. She understood I was simply too tired to do it myself. As I sank into the cushioning of the chair, I suddenly wondered it the Luddites weren’t right after all. Maybe we’d all have been a lot better off not knowing half of what we know.
Wezleski thought so. No one ever knew why. I think maybe I understand what he was thinking when he would just smile at certain questions, making his joking apologies to humanity for all the harm he had caused by inventing time travel.
Whatever the case, we do know what we know, and it’s too damn late to go home again. We’re human beings. As a race we’ve always been on one edge or another. I guess this is just the latest one. Well, that’s what comes from getting the race to where it was—too damn smart for its own good.
Working at keeping my body from spilling onto the floor, I pulled myself erect in my chair as best I could. I had, of course, absorbed Thorn’s soul the way he had Peasley’s. The CEO had been right; it was a rush, all right. One my people and I have all been through in the past when eliminating other would-be conquerors.
Even through my rage, I almost chuckled at Thorn’s questions to me—if I had ever had a truly creative thought, if I had ever known the thrill of having every ounce of a person’s creative life flash through my system?
Yes, Mr. Thorn, I have. But like any truly mature person, I learned long ago that pleasure always comes with an ever-escalating price tag.
“You know, chief,” my second said, taking a brief look down into Thorn’s uncomprehending eyes, “whichever ‘they’ said it first, ‘they’ were right. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
I just groaned and threw a mock punch at her head. She laughed. Hoping that somewhere Quentin Peasley was having his own richly deserved last laugh, I dragged myself out of zVz’s chair and headed for the door and back to work.
I was sure there was something to do somewhen.
THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT (Epsilon), by Grendel Briarton
When the redoubtable Esmeralda Birdbath, Executive Professor of English Literature and Gracious Living at Weekatonk University, assumed the Presidency of the Society for the Aesthetic Rearrangement of History, she at once sent Ferdinand Feghoot off to 2882 to learn whether he pet program—for the Butlerization of Literary Criticism—was to succeed.
“I must know!” she cried. “Return instantly, to this precise moment!” And she pushed him into the Society’s temporal transmitter.
A tense few minutes later, he reappeared.
“You have triumphed!” he announced. “In 2882, Samuel Butler’s great dictum that the true test of literary genius is not the ability to write an inscription but the ability to name a kitten dominates all literary criticism, and I’m happy to say that I, in the three weeks I spent there, won their much-coveted Samuel Butler Memorial Gold Medal by doing so. I and five hundred others were in the finals, and the names we chose had to reflect our kittens’ backgrounds and breeds. They brought me a delightful blue-point Siamese, a tom, and I named him instantly—Levi Strauss—to tremendous applause.”
“But that’s absurd,” she snapped. “A Jewish name could have nothing to do with that kitten’s heredity!”
“On the contrary, dear Esmeralda,” said Ferdinand Feghoot. “I called him that because of his blue genes.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT, in add
ition to being a best-selling science fiction and fantasy author for various Star Trek novels and the 4-volume continuation of Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” series, has published more othan 40 books and 100 short stories in the field. He won the Black Orchid Novella Award for his mystery story “Horse Pit” a few years ago. He doesn’t find much time to write these days, since he’s kept busy as publisher of Wildside Press, but he tries to write at least one story each year. He penned “Try, Try Again” as an original contribution to this volume (he’s a big fan of time travel stories).
The late REGINALD BRETNOR (1911-1992) was never a prolific writer—he wrote only a handful of books and about 100 short stories (and more than 120 short-short “Feghoots” under his GRENDEL BRIARTON pseudonym)—over a 45-year writing career. In addition to wars, weaponry, and science fiction, Bretnor’s broad interests included cats. (And puns. Did we mention the horrible puns?)
DAMIEN BRODERICK (born 22 April 1944) is an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of more than 50 books. His science fiction novel The Judas Mandala is sometimes credited with the first appearance of the term “virtual reality,” and his 1997 popular science book The Spike was the first to investigate the technological Singularity in detail. Check out his latest book, Adrift in the Noosphere, now available from Wildside Press.
AUGUST DERLETH (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the U.S. that had only been readily available in the U.K.), Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction and biography.
RICHARD A. LUPOFF has written sixty volumes of fantasy, mystery, science fiction, horror, and mainstream fiction. His recent books include the collection Killer’s Dozen, Quintet: the Cases of Chase and Delacroix, Before 12:01 and After, The Universal Holmes, Terrors, Visions, and Dreams. His nine-volume mystery series involving Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum was reissued by Wildside Press in 2013.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN (March 22, 1911 - April 2, 1994) was an American science fiction writer. He was among the stalwart group of early sci-fi pulp writers who popularized the genre. He sold many popular stories to pulp magazines in the 1930s.
DAVID GRACE is the author of thirteen novels, two collections of crime short stories and five collections of science fiction short stories. His novels are available in paperback from Wildside Press and in ebook form from most major ebook stores. His author page can be found at davidgraceauthor.com.
EDMOND HAMILTON (1904 – 1977) was an American author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. His career as a science fiction writer began with the publication of the short story “The Monster God of Mamurth”, which appeared in the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales. Hamilton quickly became a central member of the remarkable group of Weird Tales writers assembled by editor Farnsworth Wright, that included H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Hamilton would publish 79 works of fiction in Weird Tales between 1926 and 1948, making him one of the most prolific of the magazine’s contributors.
Hamilton became a friend and associate of several Weird Tales veterans, including E. Hoffmann Price and Otis Adelbert Kline; most notably, he struck up a 20-year friendship with close contemporary Jack Williamson, as Williamson records in his 1984 autobiography Wonder’s Child. Through the late 1920s and early ’30s Hamilton wrote for all of the SF pulp magazines then publishing, and contributed horror and thriller stories to various other magazines as well.
In 1946 Hamilton began writing for DC Comics, specializing in stories for their characters Superman and Batman. One of his best known Superman stories was “Superman Under the Red Sun”, which appeared in Action Comics No. 300 in 1963 and which has numerous elements in common with his 1951 novel City At World’s End.
C. M. KORNBLUTH (July 2, 1923[1] – March 21, 1958) was an American science fiction author and a notable member of the Futurians.
EDWARD M. LERNER worked in high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior VP. His novels range from technothrillers, like Small Miracles and Energized, to traditional SF, like the InterstellarNet series, to, collaborating with Larry Niven, the space epic Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels. Check out his ebooks (also availabe in paperback) from Wildside Press, which include Creative Destruction, Countdown to Armageddon, and A Stranger in Paradise.
FRANK BELKNAP LONG (1901–1994) was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (at the 1978 World Fantasy Convention), the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (in 1987, from the Horror Writers Association), and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).
RICHARD A. LUPOFF has written sixty volumes of fantasy, mystery, science fiction, horror, and mainstream fiction. His recent books include the collection Killer’s Dozen, Quintet: the Cases of Chase and Delacroix, Before 12:01 and After, The Universal Holmes, Terrors, Visions, and Dreams. His nine-volume mystery series involving Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum was reissued by Wildside Press in 2013.
WILLIAM F. NOLAN (born March 6, 1928) is an American author, who has written hundreds of stories in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. Nolan is perhaps best known for coauthoring the novel Logan’s Run, with George Clayton Johnson, but has written literally hundreds of pieces, from poetry to nonfiction, to prose.
PHILIP FRANCIS NOWLAN is best known as the creator of comic-book (and movie serial) hero Buck Rogers. The original Buck Rogers is featured in his story here, as Buck travels from the 20th century to the 25th century through the properties of an unknown gas.
H. BEAM PIPER created quite a few memorable stories and novels, including the classic Little Fuzzy. Many of them are collected in The H. Beam Piper Megapack, available where you purchased this ebook.
DALLAS McCORD “MACK” REYNOLDS (November 11, 1917 – January 30, 1983) was an American science fiction writer. His pen names included Dallas Ross, Mark Mallory, Clark Collins, Dallas Rose, Guy McCord, Maxine Reynolds, Bob Belmont, and Todd Harding. His work is noteworthy for its focus on socioeconomic speculation, usually expressed in thought-provoking explorations of Utopian societies from a radical, sometime satiric, perspective. He was a considerably popular author from the 1950s to the 1970s, especially with readers of science fiction and fantasy magazines.
JAMES H. SCHMITZ (October 15, 1911–April 18, 1981) was an American science fiction writer born in Hamburg, Germany of American parents. Schmitz wrote mostly short stories, which sold chiefly to Astounding Science-Fiction (which later became Analog Science Fiction and Fact), and to Galaxy Science Fiction. Gale Biography in Context called him “a craftsmanlike writer who was a steady contributor to science fiction magazines for over 20 years.”
H. BEAM PIPER (March 23, 1904 – c. November 6, 1964) was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series of stories and a shorter series of “Paratime” alternate history tales. Many of his books, including Little Fuzzy, Six-Gun Planet, Space Viking, and collections of his short stories, are available from Wildside Press. A collection of his work is also available as part of the “Megapack” series, The H. Beam Piper Megapack.
DARRELL SCHWEITZER is an American writer, editor, and essayist in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitze
r is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres, many of which are available from Wildside Press. His most recent book is a collection of sword & sorcery stories, Echoes of the Goddess, available in print and ebook from Wildside Press.
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK (August 3, 1904 – April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He was honored by fans with three Hugo Awards and by colleagues with one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master and the Horror Writers Association made him one of three inaugural winners of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories Page 54