by Barry Lyga
Wally shuddered, too, in empathetic memory. He knew a woman at school who kept a rat as a pet. He’d never be able to look at that rat the same way again.
“He was actively using the computer, so this backup should be relatively recent,” Cisco said. “Let’s dive in, shall we?”
Poring through the contents of Earthworm’s hard drive took longer than expected. It was a big drive, packed with data going back ten years, to Herbert Hynde’s days in medical school. Some kind of glitch had removed most of the created-by dates from the files, so Cisco, Wally, Iris, and Caitlin divvied them up and went through them manually. Joe had a late shift at the precinct but promised to come back when he could. H.R. pled ignorance of primitive Earth 1 computers but did an excellent job keeping them optimally caffeinated for the task at hand.
Eventually, they began to piece together what had happened.
“Poor Herbie,” Caitlin murmured.
She read a journal entry dated the day after the particle accelerator explosion:
Still feel a bit flu-ish, but I can’t miss a shift. I’ll see if someone can give me a flu shot and maybe hook myself up to an IV to keep hydrated.
Saw a man today on my ER shift named Cameron Scott. His skin had developed patches of a silvery eczema. Eczema is probably the wrong word—it wasn’t bumpy or uneven. It was smooth and seemed to conform to the contours of his skin. None of us had ever seen anything like it. We admitted him for observation. Wish we could do more.
An entry from a day later:
Actually studied myself in the mirror this morning. Thought it was the lighting in my apartment, but my skin seems yellowish. Looks the same under the lights in the hospital, and a nurse even commented on it.
Could it be jaundice? I don’t have any other symptoms—no itching or nausea, though I still feel under the weather. Weird.
And a day after that:
Skin seems a deeper yellow now. Going to run a liver-enzyme test at the hospital today. Also, check my bilirubin levels and do a blood panel, just to be safe. Had weird dreams.
Personal note: My hair is thinning even more. Found a clump in the sink when I washed my face. Great.
“It’s like watching a horror movie in slow motion,” Cisco said. “Where you know the ending already, but he doesn’t.”
Caitlin shook her head and worried her bottom lip. “He had no idea what was coming.”
Wally found an entry from several weeks later. By now, Hynde was no longer going to the hospital. His journal had become scattered and somewhat stream-of-consciousness. Difficult to interpret.
“It’s a bunch of numbers and letters,” Wally said. “Gibberish.”
“Let me look at it.” Caitlin peered over his shoulder.
Iris stood up abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared into the hallway, then took a turn and stepped into an alcove. Once there, she pulled Barry’s phone out of her pocket. It had vibrated insistently at her, and she knew why.
“Hello, Mr. Frye,” she said, answering.
“Let me guess: Allen isn’t available right now.”
Iris sighed heavily. Every fiber of her being wanted to be able to answer that question differently. “Well, no,” she replied.
“It’s nine at night,” Frye grumped. “His hearing is in fifteen hours. He can call me at any point during those fifteen hours if he decides to take this seriously. I’ll be at the hearing at noon sharp. If he isn’t there, well, make sure he understands there’s not much I can do. By which I mean: There’s absolutely nothing—zero, zilch, nil, nada—that I can do.”
“I’ll tell him,” Iris whispered, then rubbed fiercely at the tears that sprang up at the corners of her eyes. Right now, she would be thrilled just to see Barry again, never mind help him keep his beloved job. Earthworm was a good distraction, such that she’d managed to not think of Barry lost in the time stream for a whole day, but it was a fact: He was gone. If Darrel Frye knew why Barry hadn’t called him back, maybe the man would soften. But Iris sort of doubted it. Frye didn’t seem like the kind of man who softened for anything.
“When I see him, I’ll tell him,” she said as steadily as she could, but when Frye broke the connection, she allowed herself to weep silently there in the alcove.
Come back, Barry. Wherever you are, whenever you are, please, please, please come back.
24
Barry almost felt guilty at how easy running into the sixty-fourth century was. Compared to his exhausting, painful, grueling slog from the twenty-first century to the thirtieth, this felt like a pleasant, early-morning jog along the banks of the Keystone River. The power of the Cosmic Treadmill pulled him through the time stream, the years and decades and centuries whipping by.
Before he knew it, the colors of the time stream faded around him, the world resolving and solidifying into place. There was once again something real beneath his feet, and something other than spinning rainbows before his eyes. A room resolved into place around him, maybe ten feet to a side, completely featureless. The walls shone a bright white, as did the ceiling and floor. He felt as though he’d materialized into a commercial for a new smartphone.
There was a woman standing right in front of him, patiently waiting as though she’d been expecting him. She wore a blue and silver jumpsuit with a shining white helmet that had a clear face shield. She smiled at Barry, inclined her head in greeting, and spoke:
“”
Barry blinked and put one hand up to his ear. Sure enough, the telepathic plug that Dawn had lent him was still there. Had it been damaged by the rigors of time travel?
“?” the woman said. “?”
“I don’t understand you,” Barry told her. “I don’t think my telepathic plug is working anymore.”
The woman stared for a moment, her expression blank, and then her eyes widened in understanding. She raised a finger, and a part of Barry was charmed and relieved to notice that even millennia into the future, the gesture for Hang on a second hadn’t changed.
She fiddled with her helmet for a moment, then nodded once. Her eyes closed, then opened again, and she smiled and said, “Is this better?”
Exhaling a sigh of relief, Barry said, “Yes! Much! I think my telepathic plug must be on the fritz.”
“It’s been automatically disabled by our citywide electromagnetic targeting system,” the woman said. “Telepathy is illegal in this era, so we can’t allow such technology to function.”
“Then how are we understanding each other right now?”
She tapped her helmet. “I downloaded standard American English into my Wernicke’s area, along with the slang identified as being part of your era, daddio.”
Wernicke’s area. That was a part of the brain, located in the left hemisphere, that partially controlled speech and language comprehension. And she had apparently—wirelessly, no less—just injected an entire language into hers.
Wow.
“I’m, uh, impressed.”
“It’s nothing, dawg,” she said. “I apologize for not doing so sooner. I should have been prepared for your arrival.”
“You were waiting for me? How did you know—”
“Our chronal scientists were woke to the blue Doppler shift of temporal energies caused by your progress through the time stream. We’ve been awaiting your arrival.” She held out her right hand. “I am Citizen Hefa of the Quantum Police, and it is my pleasure, Flash, to welcome you to the year 6345 for the first time.”
First time? He decided to let that go and shook her hand. She seemed inordinately pleased.
“Did I do that right?” she asked a bit excitedly. “It’s my first ancient ritual.”
“You were fine,” he told her.
She stood a little straighter, bolstered by his praise. “Thank you. I’ve spent my life studying deep history, so I am familiar with your primitive era, my brother. I’m afraid we have no commercially available soda water, but I took it upon myself to carbonate a distillation of vegetable ext
racts for your enjoyment.”
She gestured, and suddenly in her hands appeared a slender glass filled with an effervescent brown liquid.
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re offering me a cola?”
“My research indicates that people of your era subsisted mainly on such a concoction. Is my research not dope and fly?”
She looked so forlorn at the prospect of having gotten this detail wrong that he accepted the soda from her even though he wasn’t particularly in the mood. The run from the thirtieth century had made him a little thirsty, though, so he took a glug of the soda. It was . . .
. . . the absolute worst, most disgusting thing he’d ever tasted. Like someone had soaked their sweat socks in bubbly water for a day and a half, then dumped in two cups of sugar. He managed not to gag, mindful of the hopeful, delighted expression on Hefa’s face.
“I appreciate the beverage,” he told her with as much earnestness as he could muster. “I’m sure your research didn’t indicate this”—because I’m making it up right now—“but in my era, we sipped sodas in between glasses of plain water.”
Her eyes widened. “Truly? You’re not fronting, home-boy?”
Barry bit the inside of his cheek. It was like listening to his grandmother trying to freestyle rap. “No, I’m not, uh, fronting.”
She took back the glass of cola, and it vanished, replaced by a glass of water. Barry drank the water gratefully, washing the taste of the “soda” out of his mouth, then asked, “How are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Making things appear out of thin air like that.”
She blinked rapidly as though he’d asked her how she was breathing or standing or something similarly obvious and idiotic. Then she relaxed. “Of course. In your time . . . I do it the same way everyone does in this time: I’m simply manipulating matter on a small scale, coercing ambient molecules into a predetermined form.”
“Is everyone a metahuman in the sixty-fourth century?”
“No, no. We use quark induction. In your era, it would have been called nanotechnology.”
Duh! Barry mentally slapped his forehead. Of course! Hocus Pocus’s wand was based on a super-sophisticated, highly advanced nanotech that even Cisco hadn’t been able to crack. Apparently such technology was commonplace here. Citizen Hefa didn’t carry a wand, but Barry was reasonably certain that if the tech could fit into Hocus Pocus’s slender little wand, there’d be no trouble embedding it in Citizen Hefa’s clothes or helmet.
If everyone in the sixty-fourth century had access to such technology . . . What was this era like?
He stopped ruminating on the possibilities. It was pleasant to chat with Citizen Hefa of the Quantum Police, but he had a purpose in mind. He produced Hocus Pocus’s wand from inside his costume and held it up. “Do people sometimes do their quark induction with one of these?”
At the sight of the wand, Citizen Hefa audibly groaned. It was an endearingly normal and very human thing from an era that seemed beyond normalcy and mere humanity.
“Yes,” she said with a sign. “Hobicubispobicubis, formerly known as Citizen Hocu.”
“He came to my era using the name ‘Hocus Pocus’ and caused some problems—”
“Yes. We’re aware.”
“I’m hoping you can help me out, then. We stopped him and put him in a prison, but he escaped. I’m wondering if you have some way of tracking—”
He stopped speaking, for Citizen Hefa was shaking her head determinedly.
“Escaped? Oh, no. I’m terribly sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding. Hobicubispobicubis did not escape from your prison, Flash.
“We let him out.”
25
Barry stood completely still as Citizen Hefa’s revelation hung in the air between them.
They let him out.
They let him out.
He’d come to the sixty-fourth century looking for help in figuring out Hocus Pocus’s motives and intentions. Maybe even get a little future tech of his own to counter Pocus’s. But now he learned that the police of this era had known Hocus Pocus had come to the twenty-first century . . . and that they’d sprung him from jail!
Was the entire sixty-fourth century a criminal haven? What was going on here?
In an instant, multiple possibilities flashed through his mind. He could escape this room, but there seemed to be no doors, and he didn’t relish vibrating through one of the walls into the unknown. Or he could gamble: snatch Citizen Hefa’s helmet at superspeed and hope that her nanotech was located there. Once she was powerless, he could interrogate her.
Or he could relax his internal vibrations and return instantly to the twenty-first century. But then he’d know nothing more than when he’d left home.
Last possibility: He could slow down and try talking some more.
“You let him out?” he demanded. “Why?”
She seemed a bit flabbergasted by his question. “Why? Because he is our responsibility, Flash. Our incompetence allowed him access to forbidden time transportation technology, which made it possible for him to wreak havoc in your era. I offer you and the denizens of your time period the apologies of both the Quantum Police and of the Technocracy for allowing that to happen. We are hugely chagrined for our diss.” Her jaw actually trembled toward the end, and Barry thought she might break down from her rage.
“It’s OK,” he told her. “We handled it. For now. But why would you let him go free?”
Citizen Hefa held up both hands. One more gesture cataloged in the future: Oh, no! You misunderstand! “We did not let him go free, Flash. We simply teleported him through time into a secure facility of our own. Your era is not outfitted to incarcerate someone with Hobicubispobicubis’s abilities.” She paused for a moment, and some new idea lit up in her eyes. “Was the facility we plucked him from supposed to be secure? Then why didn’t it have something as basic as shielding against sub-quarkian harmonics manipulation?”
“You got me there,” Barry said.
She missed his sarcasm. Or maybe they just didn’t have sarcasm anymore in the sixty-fourth century.
“Hobicubispobicubis and his ilk have caused many problems for us recently,” she went on. “We Quantum Police typically regulate matter and energy. Actual crime is nearly extinct in our era, so we are ill-equipped to handle these techno-magicians and their monkeyshines.”
Barry couldn’t help it—a tiny giggle escaped him. “Monkeyshines?” he blurted out.
Citizen Hefa’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that the correct term from your time period? Or should I have said chicanery? Or skulduggery? Or—”
He held up a hand to stop her. It worked. Another gesture that transcended eras. “I get the point.”
“True dat,” she said agreeably, nearly causing him to explode with laughter.
Instead, he reminded himself to focus on the issue at hand. “You said ‘and his ilk.’ There are others like him?”
“Mos def, sweetie pie,” Citizen Hefa said with a perfectly straight face. “Hobicubispobicubis belongs to a clan of techno-magicians, with others such as Prupesuptoupchupanupgeoup, Aliskaiszisamis, and Bisebbseidseibseobsebdseidseiseboose. They are led by the one they call their Most Exalted—”
“Abra Kadabra,” Barry murmured.
“—Abhararakadhararbarakh, once known as Citizen Abra. They are all obsessed with the stage magicians of ancient history, replicating their feats and performances. But in our era, such tricks are singularly unimpressive.”
That made sense. With the technology at the disposal of the average sixtieth-fourth-century citizen, magic tricks would just seem . . . banal. Who would gasp at pulling a rabbit from a hat, when anyone could do so with teleportation? Or stand agog at a levitation stunt when nanites meant anyone could defy gravity?
And suddenly, Hocus Pocus’s rampage through twenty-first-century Central City made perfect sense. He had always played to the crowd. And when the crowd hadn’t responded, he’d used his wand’s nanotech to mak
e them respond, filling his world with applause and approbation.
“So you abducted Hocus Pocus from my time and did what with him?”
Citizen Hefa opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, paused, then said, “Why don’t I show you?”
A door opened behind Barry, where there’d been no door before. He took this pretty well, he thought. He was becoming used to the future’s almost blasé neglect of most laws of physics and common sense.
“After you,” she said, gesturing to the door.
Barry stepped through and into a world unlike any he’d ever seen or imagined.
Only the presence of a sky—perfectly clear and shading toward nighttime—told him that he was outside. Otherwise, he would have assumed he was inside some sort of massive superstructure.
The ground beneath his feet was more like a floor: To every horizon and in every direction, it stretched out, a silvery-gray substance that yielded perfectly to each step, offering an almost sublime level of support.
At irregular intervals, spires rose from the ground, their matte surfaces stark outlines against the evening sky, colored in various pastels. Thicker at the base, tapering to needle-points, they soared to the clouds, brilliant, sharp lavenders and pinks and soft blues. They seemed to be roughly as tall as a skyscraper in his day, but some were clearly even taller, their tops vanishing into perspective and distance. Turning, he realized that he had just stepped out of one such spire, a faded red spindle maybe thirty stories high.
Citizen Hefa followed him outside. The door slid shut, its seam melding perfectly into place such that it was indistinguishable from the rest of the spire. Then, to his shock, the spire itself melted into the ground. In seconds, it was as though it had never been there.
“What is this place?” Barry asked her.
“I don’t follow,” she said, puzzled.
“I mean . . . There’s nothing natural here. Just these . . . buildings, I guess? I assume we’re on Earth still, but where?”