by Brian Hughes
Another time.
Another universe.
Same place, that being Patternoster Row.
Another human being sat upright indignantly, shaking the concussion from her head with great deliberation. She blinked once, licked her powdery lips and explored the familiar scenery with a pair of bloodshot bulbous eyes.
Seconds later Cissy screamed. An ear piercing wail, violent enough to drag her cross-eyed mother back into the realms of consciousness.
“WHAT?” Mrs. Doyle shot upright at high velocity. “What y’ screamin’ at Cecilia? For God’s sake y’ stupid girl! You’ll bring the ’ole bloody ’ouse down if y’ carry on like...”
Her voice petered off apathetically. She was no longer tucked up comfortably beneath the eiderdown of her saggy old bed. Instead here she was sitting, fully clothed, on fractured concrete. Weeds surrounded her beanbag body with threatening abandon. The general theme of Jackson Pollack occupied her vista.
“I thought this place ’ad bin destroyed?” By this point she was no longer under any delusion about her situation. “’Oo put the buildin’s back up then?”
She frowned, absentmindedly picking up a chunk of broken machinery gyrating by her hip. Holding it up between a bent hoary thumb and forefinger, she shook it as though that might help her work out what it was. Then she noticed all the other pieces scattered about her in the manner of Jack Straws.
“Mr. Spaceman?” Cissy’s mind was already racing ahead. “What the bloody Hell’s happened?”
“Cecilia Doyle!” A wizened finger wagged severely beneath her buckled teeth. It was aiming at her nose but had misjudged itself from anger. “Just ’cos we don’t know what’s ’appened, there’s no call for using that sort o’ bloody language.”
Cissy wasn’t in the mood for arguments. Instead she listened intently. On the furthest perimeters of her hearing she could just discern a tiny voice muttering something important at an almost inaudible volume.
Cissy listened so closely that her eardrums creaked. The voice sounded as though it was travelling along a taut length of wire attached to a tin. ‘Warning Commander. Localised Temporal Disturbance!’
Suddenly she knew that she had to find the warning’s source. Something in its urgency left little room for indiscriminate time wasting. She launched herself forwards on all fours. There followed a great deal of scrabbling and shovelling. At length she discovered the commander’s bracelet, wedged in a tight crack and sporting a pebble motif. It was pulsing in the glow of its own miniature strobe light. A great deal of effort was required to work the trinket free.
Breathless with worry Cissy punched at the buttons. Any old random sequence, she’d leave the rest up to irony. As irony would have it luck was on her side today.
“’Oo the ’Ell’s that?” Cissy swung round at her mother’s shrill whine. She was confronted by a familiar, battle-scarred dwarf.
“Don’t laugh!” For a moment the dwarf looked embarrassed. “I’m working on it!”
“ANN?” Cissy scrambled to her feet. “ANN. What’s going on? Where’s the commander?”
“Ah...yes...” The midget looked down at its iron-toed boots and started to shuffle awkwardly. First things first, ANN decided. Which meant concentrating instead on what had happened to Cissy.
“Tachyon Bomb!” She studied Cissy’s puzzled expression. “I’m sure the commander must have told you about it. Very odd properties, Tachyon Bombs…”
“What sort of properties?”
“Well...” The bristled tips of ANN’s bushy moustache trembled. “Tachyon particles tend to do strange things with time. They sort of bend it a little...”
At this point she stopped as if expecting a further inquiry. She was right to have done so.
“So we’ve gone backwards in time?”
“Sort of...” The dwarf mulled matters over. “More sort of sideways, really. But probably backwards a bit too. You see, the act of observation affects that which is being observed.”
There was a pause, presumably for another leading question. All that Cissy could manage was a blank stare.
“What?”
“It’s an old experiment, apparently...” ANN struggled for the best explanation. “Involving a Malthusian Meerkat and a double-barrelled laser rifle.”
Cissy screwed her features into a ball of disgust. “Sounds rather unpleasant to me. What’s that got to do with this?”
“Probably nothing.”
There was still no verbal response and, judging from Cissy’s expression, there wasn’t likely to be one. ANN continued, following a few uncomfortable coughs.
“Sooner or later this time line will meet up with the other one. So, whatever you do, try not to alter anything.”
“How far back in time do you reckon we’ve travelled?” Cissy took a quick glance around, half expecting to see some bloke in a top hat and cravat come marching round the corner.
“Well, judging from that familiar looking shuttlecraft hurtling through the atmosphere, I’d estimate about two days.”
Cissy followed the dwarf’s gaze. Up into the amber evening sky. Her stare reached the full harvest moon where a charcoaled line of smoke had scribbled its path across its wide vacant features. And suddenly Cissy felt very old indeed.
It had only been two days but she still remembered vividly how she’d felt when she’d first clapped her enormous eyes on that trail across the clouds. The excitement, the romance, the great expectation. And now...since that time all of her illusions had been shattered one by one, the perfect evolution of science being chewed up and spat out like an old Brussels sprout.
But somehow, deep inside, she felt glad. Much improved for the experience.
“What about Commander Hogan?”
To be honest she already knew the answer before she asked. But she’d asked anyhow on the off chance that her gut feelings might have been wrong.
The dwarf’s expression said it all. With compressed lips and a heavy shrug of the shoulders, its beady eyes flinched. And they directed Cissy’s attention to the thousands of mechanical parts strewn about the wasteland of number three.
“You see,” said the dwarf. “The other properties of the Tachyon Bomb is that it tends to blow things up.”
Cissy’s bottom lip started to tremble, obscured as it was by her overhanging teeth. The dwarf sidled up to her, trying to present itself as amicable. For a moment it watched the huge eyeballs swell. Then it wrapped a short arm about Cissy’s shoulders in a touching manner. At least, it would have been touching if the arm hadn’t passed straight through her and emerged from the front of her flat chest instead.
“Don’t worry, Cissy. Gather up all the bits you can and let’s go somewhere quiet. I know a thing or two about electronics myself.”
Yet another time.
Yet another place.
On this occasion it’s a scrubby landscape set against the clashing azure backdrop of a lush eternal sky. A panorama of plaintive sheep, of scruffy bushes and towering rocks. Gargantuan stone edifices chiselled into garish, nightmare forms by hot winds and then polished by inclement weather.
Ripples up above. Circular ripples that expand across the atmosphere, working backwards from the epicentre of the Tachyon explosion. Backwards through time, touching on far away places and distant mountain tops. And from the undulations screams an oval shaped craft, spinning out of control in a boa of burning flame.
Colonel Vosh peered out of the porthole, his features wracked with anger. The craft skimmed across the air currents like a flimsy pebble across the water’s surface.
“It’s going to crash! We’re overweight, Waldorf!” He tightened his grip around the doctor’s neck, producing a sort of gurgled rasp from somewhere at the back of his victim’s throat.
“Speak for yourself!” said a defiant, breathless voice.
Several small reptiles, indulging themselves in one of those mid-afternoon meetings where they all stood around and blinked pointlessly at one another, suddenly sca
ttered in every direction at once. Reptiles, it would appear, have an uncanny knack of prediction because seconds later the spinning pod hit the baked earth with a thud. It catapulted back into the air and toppled over in a drawn-out scream.
This event repeated itself for another three collisions before the pod and its contents smashed into an immense rocky outcrop. Whereupon the badly dented craft reached a halt with alarming brevity.
The seams tore apart as though they were no more substantial than gossamer, the shredded metal being hurtled in fragments from the cliff face. Colonel Vosh and Waldorf found themselves flattened at peculiar angles against the rock. Both hung in that position for some time, motionless.
Slowly the darkness spiralled upwards in a sort of inverse plughole effect. It transformed remorselessly into an aching, pulsing greyness that flashed angrily on and off inside the mind’s eye.
Waldorf opened his eyes, the lids heavy and weak. And he blinked at the sudden overpowering brightness that swamped his vision. As it settled back down to a more comfortable measure, he became aware of a group of vague apparitions standing about him. Shapes that resembled trees coppiced into a crescent, hardly moving, all concentrating on him maliciously.
It was difficult to determine anything further without his spectacles. Waldorf’s eyesight had always been extremely short. He moved a hand to search for them and was bothered to discover that it was clamped about the wrist by a tight metal restraint.
The wide man with the even wider grin and the sort of haircut one would normally find on the head of an over-used lavatory brush, leaned over the gibbering body. His shadow fell ominously, the point of a fountain pen prodding at one of Waldorf’s earlobes. A sharp stabbing pain shot up the back of Waldorf’s neck as a rivulet of ink mingled with green blood tickled back down it.
The wide man stood upright. His stocky legs creaked beneath his weight. He arched his spine with satisfaction and gripped his broad hands together behind his muscular back. His face broke out into a menacing grin.
It was a shame that Waldorf and Vosh had never bothered to learn the Earther language. If they had Waldorf would have been able to read the insignia on the Major’s pocket. It read simply: AREA 51. AMERICAN SECRET FORCE’S BASE. ROSWELL AREA.
It was also a pity because Waldorf never managed to appreciate what the Major said next. He signalled to a gentleman clothed from head to toe in a radiation suit by a short sharp snap of his thumb and index finger. The gentleman approached, a black medicine bag in his gloved hands.
“Right.” The Major pointed, speaking in a deep Southern drawl. “We’ll have a look inside this one and have the other one pickled for later examination.”
And the last thing that Waldorf would ever remember was the sight of a shiny arc-welder’s mask bearing down on him cautiously, with a glistening scalpel being wielded in his abductor’s sweaty palm.
The hammering on Allison’s door was sufficiently violent to buckle the hinges and remove several splinters from the surrounding jamb.
“Just a moment! Just a moment!” Allison hopped down the narrow hallway, attempting to tug a slipper over one unyielding foot. She reached the front door, carefully drew closed her dressing gown, and inched the door open onto a sliver of the world beyond. Surrounded by a mantle of freckles her right eye peered around the frame, opening wide in surprise at the sight of Cissy Doyle on the step.
Behind her friend stood the wizened, humped figure of her mother.
“Cissy? What a sur…” Allison began, but the emaciated female had already forced the door backwards and was muscling past her with determination. There was a rather grubby coal sack slung over Cissy’s shoulder. It brushed the end of Allison’s nose as it swung by.
“Hello Allison. Sorry there’s no time to explain.” Cissy had already vanished into the living room. There followed the sounds of a bag full of items being emptied onto the Axminster rug.
Allison turned to encounter an ancient scowling face.
“This is your fault,” spat Mrs. Doyle with an acidic edge to her voice. “You’ve led ’er astray!”
“Ignore her!” Cissy’s voice rang out. “She does this to everyone. Hopes that people’ll think she’s senile!”
Doing her best to ignore the pensioner’s evil stare Allison followed Cissy into the living room and stared in amazement at the assorted jumble on the floor. Cissy was down on her hands and knees in the centre of it all, shuffling through the bits as though they were parts of some incredible jigsaw puzzle.
“This is going to be hard to explain, Allison,” she said without lifting her head. “But I’ve come from the future...”
“Oh I see...” Allison slapped her palms together, glad to recognise Cissy’s imagination at work. “It’s a game that we’re playing then?”
“No!” Cissy sat upright, placed her hands on her knees and breathed tolerantly down her nostrils. The next move wasn’t going to be easy and she knew that. “I really am from the future. From ‘Tomorrow Night’ in fact.”
Tomorrow night? It struck Allison that coming from ‘Tomorrow Night’ wasn’t a terribly exciting idea. There was little chance of discussing invented ‘Moon Cars’ or ‘Exciting Computer Developments.’
But as she watched, Allison noticed something slightly different about her friend. It was hard to put a podgy finger on it but somehow Cissy’s manner had altered slightly. She seemed more assertive now, more in control of herself, the usual sad, apathetic expression apparently gone.
“So,” Cissy continued, picking up an ornamental wristband and turning it, meditatively, in her long, bony fingers. “When I turn up tomorrow night you’d better not tell me what I’ve just said. Because that might alter things too much.”
Allison frowned.
“What I mean is...” Cissy stumbled on. “The future you see, your future, is my past. So that means that if you alter my…your future then...”
It wasn’t working.
“Tell y’ what Allison...” She pressed an almost microscopic red button on the bracelet. “I’d like you to meet ANN.”
There was a pause. All eyes, including Mrs. Doyle’s aggressive raisons, turned to the lounge door expectantly. After several uneventful moments it became apparent that nobody was about to enter. No tall, dark stranger with a mystical pendant about her neck. No stout, round woman with a high pitched American voice and an unfeasibly large forehead saying, ‘This house is now clean.’
An embarrassed cough spluttered up from somewhere about the height of Allison’s kneecap. She stared down at the shining helmet of a bearded dwarf gurning back up at her with a mouth full of pointed teeth.
“Hello,” the dwarf said, proffering up an outstretched hand.
“How did you get in?” An expression of worry criss-crossed Allison’s turgid face. Her eyes flicked back and forth across the dismantled machine strewn about the apartment. “Cissy? What exactly is all this?”
“You’ll see.” Cissy bent over, assiduously fixing several of the fragments together. ANN moved to her side, ready to instruct her as to where the various parts went.
Oddly enough it didn’t take as long as it ought to have done. The individual components seemed to fasten together easily, the scraps of Neo-flesh welding themselves automatically into position. The binding was so complete as it covered the framework that it didn’t so much as leave a solitary scar.
Whilst the repair work was being conducted Allison Moore sat on the sofa with her knees tucked beneath her chin, watching the process with an unfathomable intensity. Once or twice she twisted her head, her cheeks turning such a shade of crimson that her freckles were drowned in the flood, as various anatomical telescopic segments were installed with astute precision. Once or twice the operation prompted the response of ‘CECILIA DOYLE!’ from Cissy’s distracted mother. But then she had to take a second look just to ensure that what she’d witnessed had indeed been the robot’s spinal column going into place.
It was a very educational experience. And one tha
t resulted in the formation of an almost perfect human replica. Right down to the one-week-old stubble on the chin and the tiny, stout hairs protruding from the nostrils.
As the last seam of Neo-flesh blended itself into the rest Cissy noticed the obligatory spare chip on the carpet. She leaned down with a sneer, picked it up and held it beneath the lamp for further scrutiny.
“Don’t worry about that...” muttered ANN, dusting the dregs of the evening’s labours from her holographic hands. “We oughtn’t put that back inside him anyhow...”
“What is it?”
“It’s a memory circuit.” ANN smiled hopefully, cocking her head on one side. “A special memory circuit,” she added. “So that when he wakes up he won’t remember he’s a robot.”
Cissy weighed up the implications both for and against and concluded that ANN’s wisdom was probably correct.
“No...you’re right. There’s no need to go bothering him about such matters...” she muttered quietly. “Right!”
An expectant few moments passed whilst Cissy sat upright. Waiting and watching. Wondering when the commander was going to kick back into life. Nothing appeared to be happening, the body remaining slumped in its oversized trench coat against the armchair.
“Erm...” There was always an odd little inflection in ANN’s voice when something embarrassing was about to follow. “There’s a switch...”
Cissy waited with infinite patience.
“Where?”
“At the base of the spine...” ANN shrugged her shoulders and looked as apologetic as she could, whilst the ends of her whiskers began to sizzle with the indelicacy of it all. “It’s a good a place as any.”
Cissy could have argued the point. But she thought better of it. Instead she raised a finger of warning up to Allison, said, “Don’t mention a word to him about what he is,” and delved down the seat of Hogan’s denims with a concentrated effort not to disturb anything that mightn’t need disturbing. After several uncomfortable misses there was a dull sounding click.