I could see her struggling. And I knew exactly what she was going through – only she didn’t have the advantage of a restoration visual or any algorithms to help her return to reality. As a tear rolled down her cheek, she raised her weapon a little higher, preparing to shoot me between the eyes. I quickly raised my weapon over my head, along with my other hand, to indicate surrender.
“Don’t shoot,” I said.
“No, don’t,” said a man’s voice from behind me. I turned to see a familiar-looking man who’d stepped out from behind a nearby tree, holding a gun. He trained it on Nikki. “It’s over, agent Dennis. I’ve been sent to finish this before it’s too late.”
Nikki quickly adjusted her aim, pointing past me to the other man. In the instant she moved her arm, I could see out of the corner of my eye a slight flinching motion in the man’s hand. Like a reflex, I threw myself to my right, placing my body between Nikki and the man.
Time seemed to slow as I felt the bullet enter my shoulder and thrust me backward. The impact caused me to twist as I fell to the ground. An instant after feeling the heat of the bullet, I landed at Nikki’s feet, blood oozing from just above my right collar bone and already soaking through my white coat.
I lifted my head and looked toward the shooter. My vision blurred, but then sharpened again, and I saw that Nikki had managed to dispatch him. He lay still on the ground, weapon still in hand. She kneeled down beside me and ripped open my coat and shirt to inspect my wound.
“Why did you do that?” she muttered through gritted teeth as she attempted to stop the bleeding.
“Because you’re my wife,” I wheezed.
She suddenly stopped what she was doing. With one hand pressing firmly on the hole in my shoulder, she stared into my eyes for what seemed like an eternity. As I watched her study me, I saw tears well up in her eyes and drip onto my face. It was dawning on her. I had done what was necessary to make her see – to snap her out of her illusion.
“Michael?” she whispered. She leaned down and cradled me in her arms, pulling me close, slowly rocking me. “What is going on?”
“You’ve been lost on assignment for a very long time,” I said. “I came to find you – to bring you home.”
“And who’s that? Who did I just kill?”
“I think he’s one of us,” I said, wincing. “Go check him out.”
Nikki moved to the prone man and rifled through his pockets. They were empty. Then the man moved and groaned.
“He’s alive!” Nikki said to me over her shoulder.
“Agent Dennis,” the man croaked. “You need to come with me.” He passed out again. Nikki checked his pulse.
“He’s still with us,” she said, “just unconscious.”
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Help me to my feet.”
“I’ll do better than that,” said Nikki. “As far as this world is concerned, I’m still Nikki Scott.”
She pulled a cell phone from her pocket and made a quick call. Within a minute, four tough-looking men jogged up to us and carried both me and the other agent to Nikki’s limo, which was waiting just around the corner.
Nikki ordered the driver to take us to her headquarters and then rolled up the privacy glass.
“You both need medical treatment,” she said, “and I have a doctor on staff. You’re going to be fine.”
“What about the handoff?” I asked. “There are people expecting you to provide the arming codes for the nuke.”
“They’re gonna have to wait,” she said.
#
The Slaves for Freedom doctor bound up my wounds and also took care of the other agent. When he came to, we had some questions for him.
“What’s your name?” I asked, trying to place his face.
“I’m Max Roman. I was sent as a contingency to make sure that you didn’t fail your mission,” he told me.
Suddenly, I recognized the commander. “Well, in a way, you did just that,” I said. “Your shooting me brought Nikki back to reality. My willingness to sacrifice myself proved to her that I was telling the truth.”
“Well, I’m glad that we’ve been able to recover you,” he said, turning to Nikki. “But there’s still the issue of thwarting tomorrow’s attack. How are you going to stop it?”
“I’ll just keep the codes to myself,” said Nikki.
“And you’re the only one who has them?” Roman asked.
“The only one still alive. I set it up that way on purpose – to protect myself. Just in case anyone decided to double-cross me, I’d be worth a lot more to my new allies alive than dead.”
“They don’t have a workaround?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” she said. “But it won’t matter anyway. I’m going to call in a very detailed anonymous tip to the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA – just to be sure – you know they don’t communicate that well between themselves. They’ll find the device today.”
“How do we get back home?” I asked Roman.
“I was sent as an in-and-out job,” said Roman. “Get in - restore things so that when this superthread takes over, life will be all right in the future - then get out. Extraction is supposed to take place at the next window, which occurs tomorrow afternoon.”
“Then they can just take us all home, then,” I said.
“Not so simple,” said Roman. “Nikki Scott is established here. She could wind up dead in a park, but she can’t just disappear. Remember, that’s the whole reason we didn’t just perform a smash-and-grab extraction with her in the first place. A cover needs to be provided.”
“Can’t we make it look like she was killed by her co-conspirators for failing to deliver the nuke codes?” I asked.
“That would work,” said Roman, “but we’d need to do it right – something that would leave no identifiable remains.”
“My doctor specializes in that kind of work,” said Nikki. “That’s why I pay him the big bucks. He can make it look like I was disappeared, no problem.”
“Then let’s go home,” I said.
I grasped Nikki’s hand with my left hand, the other now in a sling. Her touch felt good – it felt right. It was like there had been a transformation. Holding Nikki Scott’s hand had been a mixture of sadness, anger, longing, and revulsion. Holding Nikki Dennis’ hand – having my wife back – seemed to make the pain of being shot fade into the past. “It’s good to have you back,” I said. “It’s been a long time.”
THE END
* * * * *
Aliens Don't Dance
“OUCH!”
“What?” asked Diana, stopping in her tracks and leaning one hand on her hip, looking totally put out. She wore a tight, bright red dress that rested mid-thigh, with four-inch red heels. The other dancers continued to twirl around them as she frowned at Gary. “This has to stop – we only have one more chance to practice before the inaugural ball!”
Gary bent down and rubbed at his right calf. Stupid humans and their dancing. “I can’t help it! My leg keeps cramping up. It’s been happening every time we do the rumba.”
“Tell me about it – I’m the one who has to keep stopping, or tripping over you, because you can’t make it all the way through one dance. It’s been going on for three weeks now. What’s your problem with the rumba, anyway? It doesn’t happen on any other dance.”
“I don’t know. But I know I need to get over it, because I know the rumba is the only way to get close enough to the president-elect. She loves to rumba.”
“Then suck it up and get dancing, Gary.”
The two resumed their positions and stepped in time to the music, but after only a few seconds, the song ended.
“Look, let’s call it a day,” said Gary, stepping over to a table that supported a large crystal punch bowl filled with ice water alongside stacks of red plastic cups.
“Commander,” said Diane, pulling rank, “You will dance three more rumbas before the night i
s through. This operation must go off without a hitch. The Alliance Master Council will be very displeased to have sent us six thousand years into the past just so we could trip, fall, and fail because of a cramp. Now get back out on that floor and dance.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Gary reluctantly.
Six thousand years. It was hard to believe people used to do these crazy dances for fun. More like torture. Of course, their bodies were built very differently back then. In 2021, humans were just humans. By 8088, they’d interbred for so many generations with the other Alliance species – the Reshku, the Fendala, and the Gynst – that any resemblance to the ancient human ancestors was mostly confined to a few “pure-bred” elites – but even they didn’t look much like these primitive people.
These antediluvian animals could move in ways that seemed totally foreign to Gary. When he’d joined the Alliance ChronoForce twelve years ago, he figured he’d be using his history degree and alien cultural training to make course corrections to history through carefully strategized and nuanced interplay with the past.
At least that’s what the ChronoForce recruitment holo had said.
Now he found himself trying to gyrate his medically-disguised body to a funky beat, just so he could make physical contact with the woman who was about to take the highest office in what used to be the greatest superpower on Earth.
According to the Matrices, and confirmed by the Oracle, this was the only way – or at least the optimal way – to ensure that first contact with the Reshku was a success instead of a bloodbath.
By simply touching June Harrison on the neck, Gary would be able to transmit, through dermal osmosis, a set of simple protein chains imbued with Nanomite Thought Transducers, or NTTs – a way to implant some basic ideas into the mind of the host, which would activate when triggered at a specific moment.
Since the Master Council knew that the Reshku first arrived at Earth on November 27, 2023, the NTTs would simply lay dormant until that day.
There was actually some dispute over the actual date of First Contact – some saying it had happened in 2021 with a stray sighting of a Reshku scout. But full diplomatic First Contact was in 2023, so that was the date they were working with.
Gary held Diane and danced, practicing both the steps, and the part where he casually places his hand on her neck. It wasn’t part of the rumba, exactly, but he should be able to pull it off, as part of his dance movements.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t just implant the codes on Harrison when she’s in college. She had plenty of men groping her neck back then – and they didn’t have to get past the Secret Service.”
“You know that wouldn’t work – the nanomites will only stay viable for three years, at most. This was calculated to be the best opportunity to implant.” Diane gripped Gary’s hand tightly. Uncomfortably tightly. “And you should know better than to second-guess the Matrices, or doubt the Oracle. Don’t let me hear you speak like that again, soldier.”
Gary decided she was right. If not out of respect for the Great Ones, then because he never really knew when they were watching. Peering at him through their ChronoVortex.
As he shuffled his feet and wiggled his hips, gripping his superior around the waist, he decided that if these missions were going to be this onerous, he’d just quit when this one was completed.
If only he’d consulted the Matrices and the Oracle before getting into this line of work. Then he would’ve known how much he’d hate dancing, and working with the Captain, and having to speak in the strange dialects of ancient Earth.
“Captain,” he said, when he’d at last completed three more rumbas, “Let us return to our private location, where we can get out of these restrictive garments and drop the pretenses of this archaic language. I grow weary.”
Diane looked at Gary with undisguised distaste. “You are a sorry excuse for a soldier. I continue to be surprised that the Master Council insisted on assigning you to this detail. A mission such as this requires a disciplined mind and an agile body. You possess neither.”
“I will succeed. Do not worry. I just require a little rest. Please.”
“Very well,” said Diane, grabbing her wrap off a chair and leading the way to the door of the dance hall. “But do not fail. I do not need to remind you that sending another team will be costly to the Master Council, and deadly to us.”
Gary replayed the ChronoForce’s motto in his mind: FAILURE IS FATAL. “Yes, Captain. I know.”
#
Once they were back at their tiny studio apartment, the base from which they’d been running this operation, Gary sat in a torn green armchair and exhaled heavily. He popped a little yellow pill, then relaxed his muscles and felt his limbs begin to stretch and grow and become supple.
Within a few minutes, he had reverted to his true form – a tall, slender humanoid with pale green skin and large dark eyes. His sense of smell was heightened and the room felt cooler and drier as his biology adjusted.
The medical treatment required to keep him looking like an ancient human was temporary, but somewhat painful. Returning to his disguise meant taking the blue pill, which always made him vomit for ten minutes after the transformation.
But even knowing he’d have to endure that to blend in again, he was willing to brave it for just a couple of hours of being able to exist in his native shape.
“One day remain,” said Diane, now speaking to Gary in their standard form of speech.
“Prepared.”
“No room error.” Her voice was sharp.
“Comprehend.”
“Prove. Recite plan.”
“Enter ball. Find Harrison, dance. Implant nanomites. Egress. Signal.”
“No!” barked Diane.
Gary bowed his head, his eyes closed. “Verify. Verify. Neglect verify.”
Diane shook her head. “Ever neglect verify. Do not neglect tomorr.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Gary wiggled and stretched his toes and closed his eyes. He had to remember to verify a successful implant before making his escape and signaling for the return journey. Why could he never remember that part?
#
Although time travel was a way of life for the ChronoForce, the concept still boggled Gary’s mind sometimes.
Temporal displacement is a simple enough science – a mere matter of controlled quantum entanglement and some calculations of fundamental particle probabilities, but there was a huge difference between the mathematics and the actual experience.
And the risks.
Gary hadn’t learned of some of the rules and consequences until he was halfway through his first mission. He found out – almost the hard way – that when a second team is sent in to finish or correct a botched job, the first team is killed.
Not as a punitive measure, but as a matter of scientific reality: there was simply not enough “room” in the space-time continuum for two teams to coexist in a single displaced temporal zone. And the first team could not be returned unsuccessful because (due to causal relationships) there would be no timeline to which to return until the mission was accomplished.
In short: FAILURE IS FATAL.
It all made sense.
So Gary knew it was up to him – his life was in his own hands. So was the life of Diana.
Or perhaps, in his own feet, as this mission all came down to his ability to dance the rumba.
Without cramping up.
The grand inaugural ball for June Harrison was only an hour away. Gary visualized his moves, his once-again human feet shuffling gently as he pictured each step of the dance.
To think, the future of the Reshku-Human alliance rested in his ability to shake to the music. His own fate relied on his ability to cut a rug.
Gary himself was one-quarter Reshku. He also had Fendala and Gynst blood on his mother’s side, along with his human genes. But he was certain that whatever his human ancestry, that background had not included any
dancers.
The Master Council knew all this going in, but they insisted on Gary because of his exquisite familiarity with the era. Twenty-first century Earth history was Gary’s major back at the academy. Never mind that the rumba was invented in the twentieth century.
All that mattered was that silly ancient humans were still gyrating in this way in 2021, and doing likewise was Gary’s only shot at influencing the soon-to-be president.
As the minutes ticked away, Gary got more and more nervous, and the more nervous he got, the more he could feel the beginnings of a cramp tickling at his right calf muscle.
He started rubbing at it, trying to improve the circulation in his constricted limb.
Diane walked in and saw him massaging himself. “What? What’s the matter with you?”
“Just trying to avoid a cramp.”
Diane pulled a small vial out of her purse. “Here. I picked this up at the pharmacy. Take them. It should prevent any cramps tonight.”
Gary brightened and took the proffered bottle. He immediately popped the top and swallowed the entire contents.
He then took a look at the little empty container and casually read the label. Then his eyes widened.
Apparently, a dose consisted of two pills. He had just downed about twenty.
And his super-fast Reshku metabolism was already flooding the active ingredients into his bloodstream.
He stood up on wobbly legs, feeling very, very relaxed. He smiled, chuckled gently, tossed the bottle over his shoulder and called to Diana, with an ever-so-slight slur, “Come on then, let’s go boogie, Captain!”
By the time the limousine was halfway to the White House, Gary suspected something was quite wrong with him. Diana seemed to suspect nothing.
As this was the big night, Gary chose to keep quiet about it, and instead focused his efforts on suppressing the desire to giggle. Everything he saw, everything he heard, everything he thought seemed powerfully, ridiculously hysterical to his drug-addled mind. From the silly human form of Diana, to the contraption in which they rode, to the whole idea of touching the new president on the neck in order to save the future of the Galactic Alliance.
Spies: 7 Short Stories Page 6