The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2)

by Kondor, Luke

  His lungs stung when he exhaled. He coughed as quietly as he could into his hand and wiped the blood against his raggedy trousers.

  As he made his way out, following the same steps the guards had dragged him through before, he walked up a cold metal stairway in the dark, lit by little more than the odd candle and the occasional hole of starlight. The only sounds were of the wind finding its way through the stone corridors. He walked past what smelled like an excretion-point and made his way towards a well-lit doorway. He stopped in his tracks and his heart jumped when he heard purring and laughing.

  Peeking his head around the corner, he saw a stairway, the biggest he’d seen in the keep. A majestic rug, frayed at the edges, draped the stairs, and at the bottom sat a guard cat, completely bald apart from the wiry fur on its tail. Next to it was a smaller female cat on all four paws. It was stepping around the guard, draping its tail over its shoulders.

  Moomamu looked across the hallway and saw the door he’d been brought through. It was just across the other side. He held his hand over his mouth as he coughed. He held his breath, waiting to see if the laughing or the purring stopped, but it didn’t. He exhaled. He looked at his hand to see another spattering of blood on his palm. Looking around the wall again he saw that the two cats were facing the stairwell. They were occupied with some painting on the wall — a pinkish-grey human-cat hybrid of a sort. Moomamu took the opportunity and walked as fast as he could across the cold stone floor and to the other side. Once there he could see the open doorway. It was the doorway to the throne room. Thethi told him that the star-door was in the throne room.

  So close, he thought to himself. He stepped a little quicker now. Thoughts of Earth and Mexican spices and cappuccino came to mind and he found himself running. His pulse quickened. He ran past another doorway of candlelight and into the throne room. His toe throbbed but still, he ran. Illuminated by lanterns hanging from the ceiling, a gilded door lay to the right-hand side of the platform where he’d seen the prince gobbling fish. Drawings in gold lined the door itself. Pictures of stars and planets and calculations. Triangles pointing to the skies and what looked like humans bowing to giant cats. He pressed his hands against the door and it creaked open. Inside it was gloomy and sound was non-existent. Squinting to look at another batch of five doors, each with its own set of golden drawings displaying different star systems and calculations, he smelled the blood rising from his throat. The familiar rusty scent.

  Moomamu stepped forwards. Thethi had told him he was looking for Sol. He looked closely at the markings on one door. He looked at the calculations. He inspected the star-system. He recognised it from his time as a Thinker. Two suns and a binary planet. It wasn’t the right one. He moved onto the next.

  The smell of the blood coming from his insides grew worse with every passing second. Something rotting. It reminded him of the parasite’s mouth.

  On the next door, he saw the star-system of the eight planets, the binary planets, the sun. Not this one either. Moomamu took another step forward. As he did he kicked something with his foot. A ball. A piece of fruit. Something …

  Never mind, he thought, as he found the right door. The right constellations. The single sun. He pulled on the door, but it didn’t move. He tugged again, but it remained solid. Something was blocking it.

  “I’m sorry,” a voice said from behind him. Suddenly a light entered the room and Moomamu squinted. He saw lanterns and teeth and the prince. “But you won’t be leaving here.”

  Moomamu looked down at the ball by his feet. It was mangled and bloody. Moomamu recognised the skin, the wiry arms, the body detached from the head. The smell was coming from a slice along the stomach where the innards had fallen out. The piece of fruit he’d kicked was Thethi’s head, now loose from his body, getting in the way.

  “Let me go home,” Moomamu said. “I didn’t do anything to you. I just want to go. Please.”

  The prince’s small face wrinkled. His tongue darted in and out as he purred.

  “I don’t think so, human. We’ve got a kingdom expecting a mauling in the morning. I wouldn’t want to disappoint my people, would I?”

  As the guards rushed him he heard the prince say something about leaving the skin untorn for the morning.

  Nisha Bhatia

  A window. Similar to the one before. Reflective on one side and see-through on the other. Buttons along the bottom that turned microphones on and off, though this one didn’t have the fresh condensation from the indigo child’s breath. The words imprinted on the glass that read “Save me”.

  Nisha rubbed her stomach. She wasn’t feeling ill anymore. Her head was clear. Her vision in focus. And she felt more awake than she’d felt in a long time. Thoughts of Edward ran through her mind. She thought of the two years prior. She rubbed her stomach again. The fallout. The separation. Did she still love him?

  She brushed the thoughts away as she ran her fingers through her hair. It was those sort of thoughts that led to drink. She was busy watching the child-killer: the copper-haired Eastern European woman. Handcuffed to the chrome metal desk on the other side of the window. Scared. Afraid of the consequences. Dr Warwick said Nisha didn’t need to be at the IPC anymore, but Nisha insisted on staying until the child-killer admitted her guilt.

  The room itself was an odd one to have in an academy. It was an interrogation room if ever she’d seen one. When she’d asked Dr Warwick about it, he’d told her that sometimes getting the truth out of an indigo child could be difficult. On account of their abilities.

  “Where’s my cat?” the child-killer said. “I need my cat.”

  Dr Warwick was sitting on the other side of the table. The chair he was on had an extra cushion, just to raise him up a little. Something for his self-confidence. The child-killer wouldn’t see that. She’d just see an average-sized man.

  “Tell me how you knew about this place?” Dr Warwick said. He looked down at a tablet computer in his hand and tapped on the screen.

  The child-killer shook her head, her mouth agape.

  “I need my cat,” she said again. “I can’t explain … without my cat.”

  “That won’t be happening,” he said. “You won’t be seeing your cat for a long time, Miss …”

  The child-killer didn’t answer. She buried her face into the table and sighed.

  “What are they talking about?” a voice said.

  Nisha looked down to see the child from before stood next to her, looking up. He’d said his name was Darpal.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Nisha said. “Go on. This is adult business.” He looked like he might cry. Nisha knelt down and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

  He nodded and scampered off in his yellow uniform — a colour for the younger years. Nisha stood back up, but too fast. Her head felt light. A flash and she saw a man’s face. Red glasses. A trench coat. A smile. She shook the thoughts away.

  “No, I don’t think so … ahh, Miss Gajos,” Dr Warwick held up the tablet computer and pointed it to the child-killer. A picture of her. Her name. Details. Everything. Facebook. Twitter. Passport. “I’m afraid you won’t be seeing your cat ever again.”

  Gary

  When they lifted the crate Gary didn’t hiss or scratch or make a noise. It wouldn’t help. Gary lay down and waited. When they threw a rug over the crate so he couldn’t see, Gary kept silent. It was an hour before they removed the rug and he found himself in a laboratory, surrounded by all sorts of equipment — medical supplies, computers, some sort of chair to restrain people.

  “What do you reckon they’ll do with him?” a man in a black suit said. He had a black stick attached to the side of his leg. A vest for protection. A thick black helmet.

  “Well … poor guy looks like he’s been beaten, probably by that lady they took in. He looks old too, so … probably just put him down.” A doctor, his face covered by a pale blue mask and overalls. He picked up a syringe and left with the uniformed man, who flick
ed off the light switch as he went. The door didn’t latch as it closed. It was a push door.

  Gary waited a while longer. He waited until it felt right, and when it did, he used his good paw to pull open the plastic latch that they’d built into the crate so that he could unlock it from the inside. He pulled it down and the plastic door swung open.

  He climbed out and got a better view of the facility. A storage area. He scampered towards the door, stood up and pushed it open with his body weight before disappearing into the facility. He didn’t just have children to save now; he had to save the Luna too.

  A MEMO from the IPC Internal Blogosphere

  Article submitted to the IPC (Indigo Parade Collective) on Sept 1st 2006.

  Dear colleagues and women,

  I’ve been working within the Hungarian branch of the academy for several years now. It’s a C-Class facility and we have found a success rate of 0.2 per mille. We’ve been pushing a lot of potentials through this funnel and we’ve been incredibly successful in finding several indigos that find their ways to the IPC Academy A-Class in our new underground London HQ.

  Fantastic, right?

  If Dr Tappe was correct, the indigo child is here to bring us closer to our destiny. To offer us a helping hand to humanity’s true fate. We think of our minds as trapped within our heads but the indigo child knows differently. How do they know this? What chemical or physiological phenomena are occurring inside their brains to make this happen?

  Now, in the early 2000s, we know full well that those early indigo children were only a taste of what was possible. In recent years we’ve seen a male boy from Spain able to read the structure of his breakfast cereal down to its subatomic level. We’ve seen a girl in Asia able to psychically connect with any living animal, be it a bird, cat, dog, or even a fly, and she has been known to calm them to a gentle sleep. And, of course, we’ve seen the binary fits.

  The fits have been known to be similar to epileptic seizures and can be induced in very similar ways. Be careful around flashing lights and anything that could cause head trauma (especially for you corporal-punishment types).

  Along with Dr Grant and Dr Warwick we’ve been working towards a class system for the indigos based on their level of abilities. I must admit, although we’ve never seen anything past a Level 3 we should be wary, as these children could become incredibly dangerous. To themselves, society, maybe more? And what of any levels above that?

  Well, as we’ve never seen a matured indigo child we really have no idea. It’s possible that they could create a physical presence in the world using nothing but their own thoughts … telekinesis, as it were. Amazing, right?

  Going forward, I believe it’s the IPC’s duty to catalogue and school these children. They will need to be taught about their abilities and more importantly they will need to teach us. Why are indigos appearing in exponentially greater numbers? Will the children become the next evolutionary phase of human life? Or will they be the end of it altogether?

  Some questions that the IPC must strive to answer over the coming century.

  Also, I’ve just started using Twitter. It’s pretty neat-o. Not many people on there yet but I think it’s cool as beans. Come follow me on @prolukelamond

  #bye

  Professor Luke Lamond

  IPC, Budapest Institute

  Holloman Air Force Base, December 24th 1960

  Dr Liz Cooper

  “WHERE DID YOU SAY THESE apes were from again?”

  “Well, first of all, Colonel, they’re not apes,” Dr Liz Cooper said. She readjusted her glasses as she spoke, trying to get a clear look at the man sitting across from her. He seemed a mile away over that giant wooden desk. The Rolodex to his right. The hunk of metal that was his typewriter. She squinted and he came into focus. His face had been chiselled from years of use. Shouting and screaming and fighting and whatnot. That’s what colonels do, right? They fight. The years of running around packed with testosterone had eroded away the curves of the man’s face. And that moustache? It looked like the foaming ends of the sea — a coastline against the cliffs. She followed the coastline trail, a scenic route, up the ridge of his nose to his hair. A standard crewcut. White on the sides to match his moustache and topped with a dark shoe-brush. Wrap all of that in the standard military uniform with his pins and badges and you had the cliché all sewn up.

  “Okay whatever,” Colonel Glenn said. “Monkeys. Where then — tell me where these monkeys came from.” When he spoke, he knocked his wedding band against the desk.

  Monkeys? How derogatory.

  Stymying a riotous outburst, Liz felt a hand touch hers. The soft skin on her own. It clenched her hand tight. Squeezing until the outburst sank back down and settled on the base of her stomach like a flat balloon. She turned her palm over and massaged the warm digits in her own, being sure to keep it below the desk, out of the colonel’s sight.

  “Cameroon, Colonel. The chimpanzees were captured in Cameroon initially.” Donald spoke with a confidence that seemed to pass through his hand into hers. “They were initially brought here in the fall of ’59, which is where me and Liz, sorry, I mean to say, Dr Liz Cooper and I, amongst a small handful of others, set about training them and preparing them for Project Mercury.”

  Donald made it sound so easy. He made it sound like it was all natural, what they were doing. Preparing chimpanzees to fly into space. Liz never set out to be the kind of person to be teaching chimps. She wasn’t an animal person. She wasn’t a people person either, really.

  “Thank you, Dr Thompson. And before I go on, I want you to be clear on what it is we’re doing here,” Colonel Glenn said.

  “Oh, we’re well aware of that,” Donald said with a smile. The happy crow’s feet showing on his sweet chocolate face.

  “You’re aware that President Kennedy has made it a personal mission of his, this Project Mercury. He’s told the world that it will be one of his legacies. That what we’re doing here will change the future. That this, what we’re doing here, will determine the very fate of humankind.”

  “Yes sir,” Donald said.

  “Okay … and you Dr Cooper?” He turned to Liz. She nodded.

  “Yes sir,” she said.

  “Okay, okay good. So now please tell me about the selection process.”

  “Well,” Liz said. “Initially there were forty chimpanzees. After some basic cognitive testing, we whittled the list down to eighteen, which is where we started a simple version of the shape testing, and a month ago we went down to six and …”

  “There’s two left,” Donald jumped in. “Sorry, Dr Cooper,” he said with a squeeze of the hand.

  “Right,” Liz continued. “So now it’s kind of down to a brother and a sister.”

  “Siblings?” the colonel said, a smile forming on the corner of his mouth. She could almost hear the avalanche of rocks as those cliffs shifted. “How interesting.”

  “Completely sir,” Donald said. “There must be something in their genetics that allow them for some sort of higher cognitive function. These two repeatedly had a much higher success rate with the shape testing than the others.”

  “Okay, okay, settle down Doctor,” he said as the smile disappeared. All trace lost forever amongst the rubble. “It’s my understanding that you’ve taken to each of these monkeys separately?”

  “Yes Colonel,” Liz said. “The brother, Ham, has been trained solely with Dr Thompson, and the sister, Sam, or Miss Sam, as I call her, has been under my own supervision.”

  “And you’ve bonded with these animals?” Colonel said.

  “To a degree,” Donald said. “It’s difficult not to, sir.”

  The colonel pushed his chair away from the desk. He turned his head and looked out of the window behind him. The barracks looked faint in the morning mist. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief and proceeded to blow his nose, before folding it back up and placing back in his pocket.

  “So tell me, Dr Thompson, what happened on Frid
ay 20th, between the hours of thirteen hundred and fifteen hundred hours?” The way he spoke. He already knew the facts. Why did he want Donald to repeat them?

  “You’re referring to the afternoon shape testing, sir?” Donald said. His hand released her own and fell to his side.

  “That’s correct.”

  “It was a routine testing procedure, but …” Donald lifted his relaxed leg and placed it on the floor. He shifted in his seat. Liz could see his mental cogs grinding. Hell, she could hear them. “Unfortunately, as with any scientific experiment, there were some errors and some malfunctions.” His words drifted into nothing. She could hear his mouth drying up. The wet tongue sizzling in the heat. He grabbed a glass of water from the desk and sipped. She looked at him. This smart and collected individual. The man she’d spent the last few years working with. She observed him as he crumbled. Poor Donald. The colonel’s eyebrow rose.

  “Colonel, if I may?” Liz said.

  “Proceed.”

  “The shape testing we do with the chimpanzees involves three shapes. One of the shapes is different from the others. The chimpanzee has to pull on the correct lever to determine which of the shapes is the odd one out. If they pick correctly, a banana pellet is dispensed, but if they pick incorrectly, two wires attached to the soles of their feet deliver a small electric shock.”

  She took a second. Watched as Donald sipped more from his glass. He placed the glass down. Placed his good hand on the other, hiding the bandages.