by Lee Bond
Samiel smiled to himself, an odious, gloating smile that’d been known to drive those who see it mad. “Time to check in on your future, Mister Nickels. You cannot remain hidden from sight for the rest of your life. I will find you outside your compound once more. And then I’ll strike. Even if you don’t kill my Zigg-heads in you’re here and now.”
The master of Time began the precarious methods needed to follow someone’s line into the uncertain future.
***
Garth twiddled his fingers for a few seconds, then reached out to grab one of the rifle bodies. “Fuck it and fuck that. Let’s push this motherfucker to the brink. See if we can’t both break this fucking simulation into fucking pieces.”
He began assembling the sniper drones.
***
Special Agent Delbert Granger screamed silently as the atoms of his body began shuddering again. He’d had a moment of respite, a spate of solace, in which he’d done nothing but projectile vomit everything he’d drank in the last twenty-four hour period, but even as he’d been wishing he was dead, he’d somehow known that Nickels and Samiel weren’t done with one another.
Time began to change again.
His atoms started burning from the inside out.
He started praying for death.
***
“Oh!” Garth looked at Rommen, who looked at him oddly. “Oh … fucking shit.”
“Boss?” They were in one of the common rooms, discussing the police matter that’d just been nicely dealt with; the local PD weren’t terribly upset that the Zigg-heads were dead, and one of the responding officers had ‘accidentally’ let slip that even if anyone on property was blameable for the deaths, there was a terrifically low chance that anyone, anywhere, would do any actual digging.
“Uhm.” Garth grabbed hold of the counter top with all his strength. The rootbeer and cream soda Slurpee he’d just poured for himself from the Official Changetech Slurpee Machine hit the ground and exploded in sugary goodness, drenching both him and the ceiling in deliciousness. “Hey. So. You … you’re gonna maybe probably seen some … something … something fucking weird happen in a second, okay? Fucking hell is this?”
Images buried behind gauze slammed into him. Scenes of a dais. Of security guards, not his. Blurry faces. Something was in his eyes. Cameras everywhere. A definite sense of apprehension filling him. People asking questions, over and over again. Applause.
Over and over again.
“What the?” Garth looked at Rommen, who –to his credit- stood off to one side, looking a little apprehensive. “This … this … ain’t shit I’ve done ye … holy fuck he’s taking me out in the future! Oh … fuck this guy.”
Rommen opened his mouth to ask his boss what was going on when his boss disappeared in a fractal burst of light. The serviceman from Kansas looked around the room. “What in the fuck?”
***
Garth tried opening his eyes but the searing blast of pain slicing through his optic nerves right then was kind of suggesting that he keep them shut for the moment. He obliged because he wasn’t really certain where he was other than the fact that he wasn’t in the Emperor Grand Hall being made fun of by a skinny European monarch with absurd levels of delusions under his belt.
“What the fuck?” Better to gasp a curse word than do nothing at all, right? All around him, he could hear the slight concerned murmur of well over three dozen people. There was a bit of tension in the room as well, and his throat hurt slightly, as if he’d been shouting at everyone.
Well, that was normal. For him, anyways. He was either doing a lot of shouting or a lot of … some other kind of loud talking that wasn’t precisely shouting but close to it a lot these days.
“What day is it?” Garth gasped. “What day is it?”
The pressure in his eyes was unbearable. There was also that other pressure there, the thing he’d felt back in the common room with Rommen, something like contact lenses. He ran a thumb gently across an eyelid while he waited for someone to decide that he wasn’t fucking around, that he really would like to know what day it was.
Preferably the year as well, but that might be pushing it.
Whatever was in his eyes was similar to a contact lens in that it was on his eyeball, but dissimilar in every other way because the goddamn thing wasn’t just on his pretty peeper, it felt like it went all the fucking way around, from front to back.
Querying shouts of ‘are you all right’ and ‘should we call for first aid’ and ‘get him off stage’ started filling the air.
Garth didn’t like the sound of that, so against better judgment, he opened his eyes and took a look around, blinking teary water down his cheeks. Concerned faces swam into view, but everything was … muted. Toned down. His world was cast in sepia, with bits of amber data trailing down one corner.
A small grin tugged at his lips. He knew where he was.
He was in the fucking future. Two months or so, if he wasn’t mistaken. More precisely, August 15th, at the annual Science and Technology Convention hosted by none other than the slightly-less-than-eloquent Elton Crux. He was on stage because of course he was, why wouldn’t he be? Emerging as the preeminent doer of good and inventor of things, one Mister Garth Nickels of Sweden or Switzerland or wherever he was from would only naturally highlight him as a person of interest in the community, and after living like a better looking and non-tissue box-wearing Howard Hughes, appearing at the convention would be the only way to calm a lot of tits.
Especially after the warm way he'd treated the country upon 'entrance' into the good ole US of A.
Garth looked at the dais, found the microphone, and just … gave it a whirl. He had no idea what he was going to say because he hadn’t lived the days prior to this moment yet. “Uh,” his voice echoed throughout the huge auditorium until it hit some squelch, “hey. Yeah, uh. I’m … I’m fine. It’s the uh, contact lenses. Well. The lenses.”
A reporter down in the front row, waving both a monstrously sized iPad and a smart phone in his direction, could barely contain his high-brow shit. “You only just announced you’ve discovered a less-invasive cure for ODD and then you suffered what looked like the world’s worst migraine headache and now you’re telling us you’re fine. Which is it, Mister Nickels?”
As soon as Garth put his eyes fully on the asshole reporter who was entirely –obviously- clueless as to the fact that they were all talking with a man who’d Quantum Leaped right into his own future and who possessed none of the relative facts necessary to adult properly, let alone hold a tech conference, the lenses started pulling loads of data from … everywhere. From the iPad and phone, from the smartwatch on the man’s wrist, to the other phone in his pocket, from the laptop in the bag that was streaming wirelessly through the available Wi-Fi to a van outside.
“Whoah.” Garth blinked, and the information disappeared. Apparently the asshole –Robin Robbins, of all fucking things- had either failed or passed the criteria for being a non-threat. He opened his mouth to drop a lively bomb on the asshole’s shining forehead when, instead, someone shot right in the old melon. “Come the…”
Everything went white.
***
“Fuck on.” Garth threw his hands up in the air and did his best impression of a raptor trainer but really he was instead doing his best not to fall down.
He was back in his lab, the 3D printers were just finishing the drones, the monitors were full of data concerning Cherry Cristal and his eyes were missing the protective lenses, so every time he looked at his printers, at the quadronic circuitry being spiralled into place by the rapidly moving light pens, each glint and flare of red-seamed energy was a dagger right into the center of his brain.
He was back in the past. Right at his save point.
“Oh. Oh cool.” Garth dropped down into his chair. “Nice to know I find a fix for that problem. But … everything else is weird as fuck though. Oh shit. Here we go.”
Unbidden, sheathes of memories –future memories, shi
t he hadn’t even done yet- started trickling in. He could see himself doing the things he’d planned on doing, was actually experiencing their success before he’d actually even done them; he could see the wild success of the digital smartwatch/health monitor augmented reality game, saw the development of a lightweight, ultra-compact VR head rig to complement that same game, saw the skyrocketing sales of units, beheld –through pain-addled eyes that’d grown even more sensitive to the quadronium lines filling the sky- his grand master plan of lacing the entire planet with circuits designed to trap Baron Samiel.
He remembered seeing Drake Bishop and Sparks Dangerously coming to the Arcade of Awesomeness on opening night, saw them in the crowd, dancing with some very good looking surfer girls all while Nickelback tore shit up onstage.
He saw sales of Specter the Game scream through the roof, generating more money for his endlessly hungry need to build tech capable of handling anything Samiel might throw at him, saw countless hours of gameplay videos on YouTube, watched people play the game in ways that he hadn’t even intended.
He saw all this and more, felt the memories and feelings and laughed, then grew angry as failures and defeats and Samiel’s intrusions into his life through the IRS and through mercenaries hired to kill him appeared on the scene.
He saw all of this. Experienced it all. A tiny, warm trickle of blood appeared at the corner of one nostril.
Garth dabbed at the blood with his pinky and stared thoughtfully at the luminescent dot. His mind whirled, grabbing at the corners of the problem. “Makes sense, I guess? Two months of memories not yet experienced, slamming into me? Prepping the way for the future, allowing me to do what needs to be done? Gotta cause some kind of neurological pain. Hm.”
One experience that burned bold and bright in him was the continued assassination of Cherry Cristal and crew. That was something that was going to happen over and over again. As, presumably, would Samiel’s eternal payback.
“Well, I got four hours to figure something out before I die again. Let’s get crackalackin’.”
***
“Rommen, it’s gonna get fucked up in here right now.”
“Boss, I … what the hell?”
***
“Let me assure you all that … ah fuck, here it comes, a bit early. Samiel, you asshole.”
Bullet. Skull. White.
***
“Well, my transient temporal superflux obviator sure as fuck didn’t work, now did it?”
“Boss?”
“Hey, uh, yeah. See you in a minute.”
“What in the goddamn hell is going on around here?”
***
“Well, Robin, I can assure you that having the occasional migraine headache is a fucking hell of a lot better than looking like fucking Greedo from Star Wars! God, you know, I’ve done this moment like eighteen times already, and in every fucking one of them, you are just … everyone duck, there’s a guy on the stairs over there … yep … he’s gonna kill m…”
Bullet. Brain. Longer white stretch.
***
“I can see what’s happening and I don’t fucking like it.”
“Boss?”
“Look, since you’re not gonna remember this, I’m stuck in a flashforward time loop. I get assassinated in a few months and I keep bouncing back to this po… well, four hours ago, all full of memories, okay? And, like, I’m trying to figure out some way to keep this from happening, only it’s really hard to invent time travel stuff in under four hours, so I keep dying.” Garth took a mouthful of Pepsi and swallowed it down.
Then he inhaled a piece of pizza. Then another one, while he waited for Rommen to digest the information. Time travel was a lot of work.
The nosebleeds certainly weren’t helping.
“And …” Rommen watched Garth cram another entire slice of pizza into his mouth, “that’s a problem for you?”
“Well, yeah.” Garth replied sarcastically around half a pizza slice. “I mean … I’ve died like … thirty … thirty-five times tops now but the real problem is I’ve got this mysterious visitor tryina get a word in edgewise. Every time I slide backwards or forwards. I could do the dying thing at least another three hundred times before I got bored, but it’s the other thing I’m not looking forward to.”
Rommen was utterly nonplussed. He felt like he’d had this conversation with Garth a few times already, but that didn’t mean anything; working for Nickels was like living in a permanent déjà vu state. Everyone was accustomed to it by now.
When Garth started talking like this, it was generally best to let the man say his piece, occasionally prod him for more information, that sort of thing. “And this is a problem for you?”
Garth jolted the rest of the Pepsi down his gullet and let loose with a very echoey, pizza-laden belch before answering. He'd murder a platoon of fuzzy red pandas for a salad right about now. “No, yeah, it totally is. Last time the dink showed up as my fucking father, and that was a real kick to the pills.”
“You don’t talk about …”
“Yeah, and we ain’t gonna start now, man.” The all-too-familiar tingling feeling of being pulled into the future by the weird rubber band effect his death had on his save point started rolling up through the balls of his feet. “Okay. I’m gonna disappear now. It’s gonna be awkw…”
The empty can of Pepsi hit the ground and rolled around, making that weird echo sound. Rommen nudged it with a toe. “Well. That was weird."
***
“Okay, so. Anyways. Let’s talk superheroes for a moment, okay?” Garth grinned at the relatively captive audience. They were all there to hear him speak, and for once, Robin Robbins was keeping his elitist reporter yapper shut, so that was nice. The Kin’kithal could see them all squinting as they waited to hear how he was going to work superheroes into his speech about emergent technologies. “I’ve got this major bone to pick with superheroes in general. Okay. Wait. No. I wanna bitch about Arrow instead. You guys watch that show, right?”
A few embarrassed hands were raised.
“I mean,” Garth put a hand on his chest, “I’m not saying I’m not a fan, because I’ve been there since the beginning. It’s a great, great show. Except for … all right. My assassin is clearly a fan of Arrow because he’s going to shoot me now. Have a nice day every…”
Bullet.
Brain.
White…
***
“No.” Garth said adamantly. “No. Fuck this shit.”
“What was that, lover?”
“Nothing.” Garth snapped bitterly as he climbed out of the incredibly soft bed. He made his way towards one of the huge floor-to-ceiling environmental windows, blatantly ignoring the condition of the room; now the memories had been unlocked, he knew this room as well as anything else in his life, and being here right now was a jagged edged dagger into his heart.
“Where are you going?”
That voice, soft and sweet and layered like velvet in the bedroom but ironclad strong in the boardrooms and the Barternics in Downtown and around the edges of the Wasteload … he’d done his level best since being in this stupid place to avoid memories like these by burying himself in his work and overloading on television and movies.
And it’d worked, too. Very well. Exceptionally well, given the emotional content associated with it, with her … with everything that’d ever happened to him back in the Unreal Universe.
Many would’ve found –upon learning of the disturbance- the memory revisions perpetrated by the Ushbet M’Tai distasteful.
To say the least.
“But not me. Oh no, not me at fucking all.” Garth made it to the edge of the room and swiped his thumb along a studded section of wall. The window went partially transparent, affording him a view of the world as it was ‘now’.
Not all of the world in the 25th century was a blasted wasteland torn to shreds by atomic weapons and whatever else had happened in the late 21st, but enough of it to make enclaves like Northern Life a bastion ag
ainst a growing tide of darkness; Eloise Havilland’s –even thinking her name brought pangs of sorrow powerful enough to have him punch the window- apartment was so high in the sky he’d started humming the theme song for The Jetsons, and because of that, all of Northern Light was visible.
High Town was in the center of NL. High Town was where all the rich and affluent men and women lived and did their work; it wasn’t uncommon in this future time for most of those people to arrange their working lives in such a manner that they never had to leave the comfort of their wealth, the sanctity of their personal roost.
But not Eloise.
Eloise Havilland, last of a dying breed.
Brave and strong enough to not only leave the confines of her aerial fortress, but to head down past Middleville and into Darkentown to consort with wasters and raiders and –most importantly- Quickmen like him. Quickmen were idiots brave enough to run quickly into the deepest parts of the Wasteload to hunt for treasures, treasures that were then brought to the androids and semi-humans who ran the Barternic stores.
It was there, in dingy little shops and odd corner nooks and, in some cases, huge warehouses packed with armed guards, where Eloise braced herself to deal with madmen and lunatics, sifting through mountains of junk in search of prizes and treasures from the ancient times, from before the world had fallen into darkness.
It was there, in one of those Barternics –Fandoo Shoran’s Emporium of Malcontented Toys and Other Surprises, in fact- that the two of them had met. Amidst twinkling Christmas tree lights strung across the whole of Fandoo’s shop, rubbing elbows with wasters surely in the employ of Samiel and raiders hungry for human flesh but needing to sell some of their gear first before they could eat, Eloise had demanded to see his satchel.
Not his goods. Not the trinkets plucked from broken homes and blasted buildings, but his satchel. Handmade, no more than five years old, it’d been with him basically since he’d been kicked loose from Jim Seeker’s Rebel Army and had seen some awful shit.
Naturally, he’d told her to fuck right off because he’d only just made it to Northern Light after trekking through the fucking Wasteload for five years in search of answers on how best to destroy a man who controlled all of time and hadn’t been up to the requirements of social interaction. Fandoo he could handle. Fandoo was a badly programmed android who thought he was living in a movie, and that was the kind of shit a weary Kin’kithal could handle.