by Lee Bond
Rommen spoke slowly, and with great conscientiousness. "You want me to come with you and … commit crimes?"
"Crimes as defined by a solely terrestrial, non-time travel-y set of rules, sure, yeah, okay, but in the broader scope of the entire fucking Universe? The things we're going up against are actual violations against Existence." Garth realized he was starting to sound exactly like the kind of lunatic Rommen clearly thought he was, so he backed down, cleared his throat, and started over. “All right. Okay. Let’s take this from another angle. Real quick. Special Agent Delbert Granger is not a nice man. He is in the employ of the enemy, and most certainly arranged for those assholes to try murder me. He is somewhere in this city and I need to find him. For the sake of argument, let us say that he will be amenable to discourse, though the last time we met, he stuck a super-powered cattle prod designed to knock out final stage ODDities right up in my face and had me doin' the goddamn Funky Chicken on the pavement. And then threatened to kill an entire hotel casino full of innocent people if I didn't do what he wanted. That’s the kind of dude we're dealing with, so, uh, kinda think callin' anything we're gonna be doin' to him a 'crime' might be ... stretching ... things a bit. And, uh, lemme just say that if we don't do this, now, this secco, there's, like, a super good chance that soon, none of this is gonna be here."
Whittling away most of Garth’s outlandish claims, Rommen found several nuggets of truth. He couldn’t dismiss the fact that this … Granger character had popped up on their radar relatively early on, or his all-too-likely complicity in arranging to have the compound invaded by successive strings of Zigg-addicts.
The Kansas City All-Star nodded firmly. Fat old men in gray suits didn't ping on his Danger Radar for no damn reason.
“Fine. It’s not unheard of for agents … for anyone in positions of power or authority to sell their influence to the highest bidder. I’ll grant you that. You’ve definitely made yourself some enemies since arriving, and the evidence that one or more of those enemies has sufficient influence and power to make your life a living hell is abundant. I don't know nothing about time-travel, but for my own peace of mind, I’ll come with you. Only if we really do try to negotiate, though. Just because this ... Granger? Just because this Granger guy might be responsible for trying to kill you doesn't mean we're going to do anything other than polite conversation. Beyond that, the only thing I'm willing to entertain is restraining him until the proper authorities can be contacted. Deal?"
Rommen stuck out a hand. It was a childish thing to insist upon, but he knew somewhere deep down in that weird heart of his, Garth was honorable. If his employer was corralled into being honest here and now, when the stakes weren’t immeasurably high, then later, if things went SNAFU-like, it'd be that much easier to keep him reigned in.
“A handshake. Huh.” Garth rose from his chair, double-checked to make certain he had no blood on him that might be transferred to Rommen –the last thing he wanted was to give the guy something that would blow his damn hand off if it got to near an open source of power- and shook it wholeheartedly once he saw he was free and clear. “All righty, I totes promise that we will for certain one hundred percent do everything in our power to convince this asshole guy to stop doing what he’s doing and that I will only punch him so hard all his hair grows back if he turns out to be the kind of asshole I remember him being. And then I’mma steal his doodad.”
Rommen made a face at the addendum to their agreement, but said nothing; the vast majority of people caught peddling influence generally turned … irate … when confronted with their wrongdoing. It was entirely likely Granger would do the same, though Rommen -who'd seen the old man pretty close up- didn't think it'd get that far; Granger looked like he'd get out of breath trying to crack open a bottle of booze.
“Agreed. Now, according to you, we’ve got just under an hour to find this guy before you what, turn into a pumpkin? And you claim you can make that happen in under three seconds? This is something I’ve got to see.”
“Hah-fucking-haha. Pumpkin. I don’t turn into a pumpkin, asshat, I explode into a ball of light. Compared to most of the shit I’ve been through in my life, it’s nearly painless, which is nice, because every time I think to myself ‘okay, that, that right there, that was the worst pain I will ever feel in my entire life’, something else shows up to say hi.” Garth sat back down and opened a channel to the almost-AI. “And as for finding our guy, all it’ll take is this.”
Garth picked up the nearest mike and commanded the almost-AI to find Delbert Granger in the ever-complex and genuinely inspired EuroJapanese language. The almost-AI responded by burning through every local database it’d been connected to, bypassing passwords at the speed of light.
Rommen blinked. “You said something. To … the computer?”
“Yup.” Garth rapped the box that housed the almost-AI with a knuckle. “And now it’s going through all the stop light cameras. And cop car cameras. And cop body armor cameras. And, uh, other stuff too.”
“You said approximately three words. Weird sounding words that sound like they should’ve wrecked your throat.” Rommen pursed his lips. “And … all those things it’s allegedly doing are super illegal and we’ll get caught.”
“A) the language I used is called EuroJapanese, and it’s one of the most complex linguistic structures in the known Universe. Each word carries roughly a dozen or so different meanings and when linked with other words, it can provide a properly programmed machine enough data in three words to give it a search parameter profound enough to find one dude in a city of millions.” Garth smiled smugly at the look of disbelief on Rommen’s face. “And B) we won’t get caught because none of these systems are capable of registering the invasion on account of how the point of intrusion on the network occurs abooooout a mile away from where my handsome ass is parked right meow. After that, anyone sniffing will simply find nothing. Thank you dispersed area network technology. Annnnd, boomola. Boomola? No. That … no. Look at this asshole. Fuck this guy.”
Rommen followed Garth’s finger to a still image grabbed from a cheap Hotel 6 lobbycam. The grainy image showed an older man wearing rumpled clothes, looking thoroughly displeased with life itself. In one hand he clutched a brown paper bag that obviously held a bottle of booze while the other hand twitched obsessively towards one of the pockets of his long overcoat. “Well. He looks a lot worse for wear from the last time I saw him, but … that’s him.”
“You got that right.” Garth commanded the system to back out of everything it was in and quirked a brow at his semi-reluctant partner. “You ready to sneak me out of here and go talk to this dude or what?”
“I guess there’s no other choice.” Rommen nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Dope.” Garth smiled, pleased that the stern dude was finally lightening up. He really did wish he was dealing with Open-Minded Rommen from the Common Area instead of Tight-Ass Disbelieving Rommen in Front of Him, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Oh, hey, just one more thing.”
Rommen waited while Garth jibber jabbered in ‘EuroJapanese’ to the machine for a long minute. When his employer was finished, he asked, “So three words got you the location of a single man in about twenty seconds. What does a minute get you?”
“Couple things, really.” Garth replied as he shrugged into a jacket that had pockets full of things that Rommen would probably shit his pants over. He jerked a chin towards the door and started walking. “Re-upped my pizza order as well as my Slappy Burger order and then told the machine to erase everything we do from anything that might catch us.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Rommen admitted, following Garth through the door.
“Hey, man. AI is a bitch to beat when it’s the only one in town, and this one ain’t even that. It’s got your basic p vs np problem solver and some ridiculously high-powered processors. Combined with the EJ coding language, it’s just a super-sophisticated computer. It can only handle a few million threads at a time.
If I had access to the things an actual AI required, I’d be in control of the planet. Damn. I should’ve asked for that. Anyways, yeah. The machine is gonna erase footage of you and me from everything except people’s memories, only without data corroboration, proving we were anywhere at all will be exceptionally difficult. Easy peasy. C’mon, let’s go and have a chinwag with a bad man.”
Rommen didn’t say anything. His mind was whirling about the huge implications of a machine that could reach into any connected computer without being caught. Of a machine that could erase the activities of anyone from … everywhere. He followed after Garth, on autopilot.
***
Granger ached for the sweet dissolution of death or unconsciousness. Either was fine by him at this long and sorry point in his life, though for preference, he really did feel as though a midnight visit from a sable-clad Grim Reaper and his bone-white scythe would be the better way.
The hammered Federal Agent swallowed another sour warm mouthful of rye whisky, wincing with utter dread as wretched heat slogged down his throat.
“How low I have fallen.” Granger hung his head morosely, allowed a long, ropy thread of spittle to trail from his mouth to pool between his chubby feet. He shook his right hand heavily, double-checking to make certain that he was still in fact handcuffed to the bed.
Yes, yes he was, though the matter would bear checking into in a few minutes. Every time the effervescent and unkind transformation of The Line rippled through him, forcing him to drink and drink and drink, small changes to his own personal line were made. Not impactful at all, mind, but enough to convince him that worse was on the way.
Granger knew he couldn’t handle a conversation with Baron Samiel, which was why he was handcuffed to the bed and which was why the dreaded phone was on the furthest side of the room away from him.
“It hasn’t tolled for me yet.” Granger rolled his head back, tried to pour another mouthful of drink into his slack lips but only succeeded in pouring the vile stuff down the front of his chest. “Hasn’t for the few hundred times I’ve been through this but sooner or later Samiel is going … going … going to remember I’m here and come looking. And I can’t hear that man’s voice. Ev… ever.”
The one thing going for him, and it was a small thing, really, was that after having endured the repeated reboot of the last four hours of his life was that he knew down to the millisecond when the change was going to come. It allowed a poor inebriated sot a few seconds to arrange for a comatose-like situation.
“Pissblind drunk, I find, is the only way to travel through time.” Granger informed the empty room. The phone sat in the corner, sulking like a malevolent demon. “And I suppose I can’t be too unhappy about missing the tail end of this binge drinking session I’m engaged in. I have all the pleasure of drunkenness, over and over again, all without waking up in a puddle of my own over-indulgence. Twenty-two minutes and three seconds.”
An uncontrollable shudder gripped Granger, starting at his black sock-clad feet and working it's way tremulously up his entire body until it struck him in the head. It was here, as always -since it'd started happening some time ago- that the poor man prayed for actual, literal death; Time was a harsh bitch and she did not like those who took control, and thus, when these shudders grabbed hold to remind him of how mortal he truly was, the conflict of images and memories that followed drove him to dreams of death.
Suicide, of course, was out of the question. No matter how displeased Samiel was with his unbounded-ness in time, the odious bastard would eventually reach out with his hands and prevent that sweet freedom by any means necessary.
"Might not stick, though, oh no it might not." Granger took a deep, ragged breath and brought the bottle to his lips. The fiery rotgut -almost too sickly sweet to be considered whisky- burned another channel down his gullet and into his guts. Seeing it was close to the end of the bottle and so very close to the time when he'd find himself four hours ago, the Fed kept at it, chugging, chugging, chugging the last bit, fighting against the sour belly burp squirming down below.
When the last of the booze made it down and stayed down, Granger tossed the bottle against the wall where the phone rest with a savage, twisted grin. He belched queasily after that, then spent a good minute waiting to see if everything was going to come out.
"Not yet, not yet." Granger chanted clumsily.
Then he did a thing he'd been holding out against until he was well and thoroughly polluted.
He held his free left hand up against the blinding bright lights of his awful room and took in all that he was becoming, blearily smiling like a loon at how the illumination from the naked bulb in the ceiling turned his hand -and his arm, too, now, which certainly spelled doom- translucent.
"The human form is oh so resilient." Granger quoted from some field operations manual he'd read as a much younger agent, so bright and keen to learn all that could be learned. "On the battlefield, injuries that should normally kill might not do the trick. The body can withstand enormous pressure, enormous damage, shocking amounts of injury. But not when it comes to time travel. No, not then."
Granger understood now, why Samiel only used those with the odd lenses in their heads. They were so very much stronger than ordinary people. The rigors of moving up and down The Line were immense, yet they bore the damage on the chin and kept on coming for more.
"Little wonder," the agent said around another fretful whisky-belch, "he saw fit to give me that stunner. Worried one of his charges might go off the rails. Shame I never had the chance to use it. Should have brought it with me. Such a wonderful toy. Could've used it to persuade those Zigg-heads with a little style instead of fearing for my life."
Or to just zap them anyways. Granger held no love in his heart for Ziggurat addicts, nor saw any rational reason to use them for anything beyond scut work, but Samiel loved the lot of them. And tomorrow or the next day or whenever it was that they failed to breach the House of Nickels –assuming, of course, that this dreaded eternal day came to a close and the sun rose again- Granger knew he’d be out there once more, hunting for an even larger group.
“Eighteen minutes, twelve seconds.” Delbert Granger’s drunken voice sounded alien to his own ears. Rattling the chains of his handcuffs again and again, the broken, beaten and battered man smiled blearily to himself.
If the phone rang, and he didn’t answer, maybe the Baron would lose his temper once and for all.
It was something to look forward to.
***
Rommen looked uneasily at the Motel 6 through the front window of his car. “This place is not defendable.”
In the passenger seat, working his way through the bag of potato chips he’d forced Rommen to stop for, Garth shook his head, spreading crumbs everywhere. Beside him, Rommen was practically jumping up and down in spastic rage over the mess, but whatever. “’s like you said, Rommen, this is an old fat dude who drinks a lot. Tell me you saw all those stops to the liquor store in the last few days.”
“Alcoholism,” Rommen answered automatically, thinking back to one of his commanding officers, “doesn’t necessarily make a person incapable of doing their jobs. For all we know, the man is a high-functioning alcoholic and is sitting in that room waiting for us. Besides, as you pointed out, he’s capable of finding, dealing with, and then launching those fiends at you. For all we know, each of these rooms,” Rommen fired an imaginary gun at every door in eyesight, “has got a pack of super-strong freaks ready to tear your face off. And mine.”
Garth tilted the now-empty bag of chips up to his face and funneled the remaining –and ‘best’ tasting- bits of deep fried grossness into his mouth. “You know, Rommen, you have a singular knack for pointing out the kinds of things that I generally miss. You and my buddy Ute would be the best of friends. You could, like, follow me around all day, whispering all that shit into my ears. Then you could stand there and be all stoic and whatnot while I do battle with, I dunno, God soldiers on the cusp of literal godhood, mak
ing sarcastic and wry one-liners about how I should’ve paid more attention. I don’t do attention. Everyone else should.”
“Be that as it may, Garth, your little impromptu junk food trip cost us ten minutes. There’s less than twenty left on the clock before you allegedly disappear in a puff of smoke.” Rommen tapped his heavy watch meaningfully, fingernail going tink tink tink on the glass.
“At least Ute would’ve understood.” Garth balled the empty bag up and dropped it on the floor. “And we’ve got fifteen minutes, twelve seconds. Loads of time. Either it’ll work or it won't, at which point I either get to move onto the next level, or I get to figure out how to get you to come with me all over again. That’s the way it goes. C’mon, dude, let’s go see what’s what.”
Rommen waited for Garth to get out of the car. When he was sure the man was all the way out, he leaned over, grabbed his waste, stuffed it into a jacket pocket, and followed Garth out into the world, all the while wondering what in the hell he was doing.
Thoughts of that powerful machine back at Changetech, capable of prying the lid off things that were better left secret, loomed up at him.
Rommen caught Garth looking over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow and emitting –finally- a deep sense of urgency, so he picked up the pace.
It really was time to see what was what, he supposed.
***
Ultimate Samiel –as almost-Ultimate Samiel sometimes jokingly referred to the him that was so far up The Line that it seemed there was only one line left in all the world- would be beside himself with apoplectic fury. Things happening down The Line were collapsing left, right and center. If there was another version of himself out there in the wilds of Time, that bloated madman would be positively insane over these repeated failures.
Things that had never happened were happening, and with brutal immovability, and so if he, the most conscious, most aware, most in-tune version of himself struggled against bitter, brutal insanity, then that final, complete, Ultimate Samiel...