At the thirty-second mark, she sat in one of the two chairs in front of the T-box and patted the seat next to her. “Sit here to get the full experience. The static wash is amazing.”
“The what?” he asked, sliding in next to her in time to hear a hum and a whine, followed by a wonderful tingling bath. The T-box display showed “Twenty-Six Arrived.”
Diesel sat up in excitement, not sure what to expect. The door opened and Twenty-Six stepped out and over to them, hands on his hips, with his belly button just inches from both of their heads.
“Hi there,” he said.
“Oh my God,” cried Diesel as he tipped his chair onto the floor to get away from the horror.
Done with her game, Lilah slid away from Twenty-Six in a more graceful but equally hasty fashion.
“Ready to go climbing?” he asked.
“Okay, enough fun.” Lilah pointed to the basement door. “You may dress now.”
Twenty-Six walked past where the blanket walkway had been, scratching his bare butt as he went through the door.
As soon as he was gone, Diesel said, “That’s a joke to you? Damn, Lilah, that was not funny.”
She didn’t rise to his bait. “You were seeing what you see every day. No question I got the short end of that one.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re nice and all, Diesel. But you just saw. Your boy parts aren’t anything special.” She gave a careless shrug. “Sorry if that’s hurtful news.”
Diesel smiled and shrugged as well, but her words were worse than a kick to the groin. He had a mad crush on a woman who thought he looked bad naked. Worse news didn’t exist.
Twenty-Six came out dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, carrying socks and athletic shoes. “You should be dressed for a workout. When any of us come back to do something planned with you, we expect you to be ready, just the way you’ll expect us to be ready when you travel our direction.”
“Fair enough. Be right back.” Diesel sprinted up the stairs to his bedroom, changed, and clomped back in time to see Twenty-Six sitting with Lilah, who was laughing at something he’d said. She even reached out and touched his arm.
Twenty-Six stood when he saw Diesel and started walking toward the steps. “The Twenties and Thirties all have bikes. You need to get some.”
Diesel loved biking and couldn’t believe his luck. “Street or mountain?” Then it sank in that he was talking to himself.
“Both,” they said at the same time.
As they climbed the stairs, Twenty-Six continued. “You need a gym membership that has guest privileges. Bob’s Barbells has a decent gym, and they opened a new climbing center last year. Twelve new top-rope climbing routes.” He pointed toward the back of the basement. “They’re three blocks that way. I thought we’d go there today.”
Diesel felt he was abandoning Lilah and turned to wave, but Twenty-Six had him beat. “We’ll meet you here and take you to lunch at one,” he told her. “Lance’s around the corner is a TV bar with a good lunch menu. They’ll have the lottery drawing on for sure.”
They exited the row house, and Diesel led the way down the steps, unlocking his car as they descended.
“We’re walking,” said Twenty-Six. “The point of this was for me to get my exercise.”
“Aww, c’mon. I just got it.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to drive.” Twenty-Six started down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. “What do you have for cash?”
“Twenty-five bucks.”
“Damn. Let’s stop at a bank and flex that prestige card before we do anything else. Remember that we travel naked, so it’s up to the host—that’s you—to provide everything. We’re talking clothes, money, transportation, communications, booze, leisure, everything.”
“I like that booze has its own category,” said Diesel, laughing, “but food doesn’t make the list.”
At the end of the street, they turned onto a broader avenue and walked along it. The buildings on that stretch all had shops on the street level, and apartments on the floors above.
“Let me have your money,” said Twenty-Six when they reached a convenience store. “I’m going to buy some camo so we don’t look so much like twins.”
He came out with a Boston Red Sox cap and a pair of sunglasses.
“I’ll take the cap,” said Diesel, then snugged it on his head.
“Let’s get money next,” said Twenty-Six, slipping on the glasses. “You should always have four or five hundred with you and have Justus keep four or five thousand in the safe. Then we never have to think about it.”
Twenty-Six led them on a route with several turns, ending at a different branch of the same bank Diesel had used yesterday. Diesel withdrew five thousand in cash, and that earned him a special bank carry pouch.
Continuing his role as tour guide, Twenty-Six led Diesel through more zigs and zags on their way to Bob’s Barbells.
“How do you know where all these places are?” asked Diesel.
“Imagine how well you’ll know this place after living here for a year. That’s me. My city one year from now looks like this, except for the bullshit water project over on Fourth. Don’t worry. You have six months before they start tearing the place up.”
Diesel looked up and down the street but didn’t know which direction Fourth ran or if it even crossed the road they were on. Then he asked a burning question. “Remind me why we travel naked?”
“The T-box only transports Diesel flesh and bones. It rejects everything else. So those fillings in your teeth? That screw in your arm from the break at Tahoe? It all needs to come out.” He jerked his thumb like an umpire making a call.
“You’re freaking me out. Change subjects.”
“Okay. Lilah hates you. I warned you about that.”
“What did I do? We had lunch and then breakfast. That’s it.”
“She knows about the hacking toolkit in your accelerator software and is angry that it’s part of Ciopova.”
“It’s an important feature.”
“We’re happy. Ciopova is ecstatic. Lilah thinks we’re outlaws.”
“I thought hot babes liked outlaws.”
“Can I be there when you tell her that?”
“What should I do?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t.”
“Both?” They’d reached the gym and Twenty-Six said, “Let’s talk while we work out. We’ll get one-day passes. Membership takes filling out a form, so come back and do that when it’s just you.”
They took turns climbing and belaying, and after forty minutes, Diesel called a break. “You’re older. How are you in better shape?”
“It’s the group dynamic. Seeing yourself as someone else has a way of forcing discipline. And when you see that other self naked, it’s a massive boost to your motivation. I swear we get more fit as we get older.”
Grabbing their stuff, Diesel followed Twenty-Six out of the climbing facility and into a huge spread of weights, aerobic machines, and other exercise sundries.
“You don’t use this stuff, do you?” asked Diesel, looking at the sea of equipment.
“After you join, schedule Shawna as your personal trainer. For a hundred bucks, she follows you around for an hour, yelling at you to work harder, and looking drop-dead gorgeous doing it. It sounds stupid but it works. I schedule her twice a week for weights, and I work my ass off hoping she’ll be impressed. Until I stop fantasizing about her, my physique will continue to improve.”
Twenty-Six turned and made for the back, entering the locker area outside a steam bath and sauna. He stripped, wrapped a towel around his waist, and after stowing their stuff in a locker, led Diesel into the dry heat of the sauna.
“You’ll learn to love it,” he said, sitting to one side of the small, hot wooden room. They were the only occupants. Diesel sat across from him.
“Christ, I’m burning up.”
“Stop being a baby,” said Twenty-Six, filling a ladle and pour
ing water onto the stones to intensify the heat.
“So why won’t you tell me how to get closer to Lilah?” Sweat started dripping off Diesel’s brow.
“Every time we’ve made an effort in the past to help Twenty-Five move things along, things got worse. Sometimes much worse. The brothers have concluded that it’s hands-off from now on. All I’ll say is that it will take longer than you think it should and the journey will be miserable, but hang in there and she’ll come around.”
“That sounds like stalking more than romance. Anyway, with that pep talk and this heat, I’m already miserable. I’ll wait for you outside.” Diesel stepped out into the cool air, dressed, and waited for Twenty-Six.
On the walk home, Twenty-Six said, “Okay. Rapid-fire. Ask your list and I’ll give you briefs. That will help you ask better questions later.”
“What’s Bump Analytics? Is it something real or just a cover?”
“Good question.” Twenty-Six checked for traffic and crossed the street. “Right now, the oldest of us is Fifty-Nine. But Fifty-Nine remembers when there was a Sixty-Two, and his elders knew of a Sixty-Four.”
“The time loop is shortening.”
“Yup. And as a group we’re fighting back. The timeline is remarkably self-correcting. If an event were to happen in your timeline—something big that made it different—then over the next weeks and months, various incidences and occurrences would nudge the timeline so it’s back in synch with the others.”
“A bump is a deliberate disruption to try to change things?”
“Man, I like this Diesel a whole lot better than the one I met yesterday. Yes, and we bump time to push back, to defend our territory, and maybe even recover some of what we’ve lost.”
“You make it sound like war.”
“We plan in a war room. Fifty-Two runs it. You’ll get your fill of this topic many times over. Ask something else.”
“What’s with Ciopova?”
“Another good question. She’s our main weapon. We work hard to give her more capability. As much as we can, as fast as we can, so she can help with bigger bumps.” Twenty-Six checked the time. “We should get back so you can meet her before we go to lunch.”
When they reached the row house, they stopped in to give Justus the cash, went to Diesel’s apartment and cleaned up for their date with Lilah, then made for the basement. Twenty-Six led him to the big monitor on the wall in Lilah’s cubicle and powered up the screen. When it resolved, it displayed the image of a mousy-looking woman about their age.
Then she smiled a broad, happy grin, and the expression transformed her face. Her cheekbones lifted, her eyes seemed bigger, and a dimple formed on her chin.
“Wow. Not bad,” said Diesel.
“You mean our very own Ciopova?” said Twenty-Six.
“Wait. This is it?”
“Her.”
“Hi, Twenty-Five. I’m thrilled to meet my creator.”
Twenty-Six thumped Diesel on the arm. “You’re Twenty-Five, by the way…Dad.”
Diesel blushed.
Twenty-Six tapped a small “2X” in a display box in the corner on the monitor. “She’s using your toolkit to gather processors. She’s already doubled her original capability. That’s the fastest time ever, and it means you’ll have something to talk about at the Big Meeting.”
“Does it hurt when they take the metal out of me?” Diesel hated the whine in his voice.
Twenty-Six nodded. “Like holy hell.”
Lilah came through the basement door. “I’m here!”
“Hello, Lilah,” said Ciopova, her face shifting back to plain features.
“She’s got the hello thing down cold,” Lilah said as she joined them.
“We’d love your help so she can do even more,” said Twenty-Six.
Lilah faced him; a clear invitation to continue the thought.
“You created the code that gets duplicated into all those jellyfish. Every time you make that module faster or more capable, it multiplies across Ciopova to huge effect.”
“You sound like you have a wish list.”
Diesel could hear the prickle in her voice.
“Let’s walk and talk,” said Twenty-Six. “I’m hungry.”
“I think I want to hear this first,” said Lilah, eyebrows level, arms folded across her chest. “Then we’ll walk.”
“Yeah,” said Diesel. “I want to hear it, too. I’m the president in this timeline, so the message comes from you to me. I’ll decide what, when, and how to deliver it.”
“Okay, please tell Lilah that we want her to be happy and fulfilled. She loves AI, so we give her Ciopova to nurture and grow as she desires. She decides the priorities. She chooses the methods.”
“What’s the catch?” asked Lilah.
“Yeah,” said Diesel.
“The catch is that she has to put up with you.” Twenty-Six turned and spoke to Lilah. “He’ll be working with Ciopova as well.”
She shrugged. “No problem. I’ll just step aside whenever he’s ready to infect the world with his next criminal tool.”
“Ouch,” said Diesel.
“He won’t be doing anything like that.”
“I won’t?”
Twenty-Six shook his head. “Think of your respective roles in this enterprise as developer and user.” He pointed to Lilah and then Diesel. “Or CTO and CEO if you want to use fancy titles.” He motioned to her computer equipment. “It’s your show. Get yourself the best equipment. Decorate the place however you like.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.” She stepped back and looked at the T-box. “A bunch of you from the future come back and get Ciopova all reprogrammed. Now your pitch is that I can have it all as my kingdom to rule?” She shook her head. “You aren’t being honest.”
“I wasn’t being precise,” said Twenty-Six. “Your kingdom would be those things pertaining to Ciopova’s software and hardware. And the reason we offer it is because of experience.” He checked the time. “We have to leave now or we’ll miss the drawing.”
As they climbed the stairs, Twenty-Six said, “We should drive.”
“Oh boy.” Diesel fished the keys from his pocket.
Lilah sat in the passenger seat, and Diesel revved the engine to show off before he pulled out. “Which way?” he asked as they tooled down the street.
“Go left this time. Lance’s is in the same place as Roxie’s, only the other direction.”
“Damn it,” whined Diesel, frustrated because he wanted to give his car a workout.
When they stepped inside Lance’s, Diesel thought the “TV bar” label was a good descriptor. The place was long and narrow, with a lacquered oak bar running down the back wall, across the end, and up the front in a giant horseshoe shape. Big screen displays lined all three walls behind the bar.
Twenty-Six led them to an empty corner. They climbed onto tall chairs and rested their feet on the footrests. Twenty-Six used a controller on the bar top to change the channel on the TV screen in front of them.
“What can I get you?” asked the bartender, straightening the napkin pile sitting on the back edge of the bar.
“I’m hungry and in a hurry,” said Twenty-Six, “so please bring him a Reuben on rye, the lady will have the Cobb salad, and I’ll have the turkey on wheat toast with fries.”
“Anything to drink?”
“He and I will have your craft brew on tap. She’ll have an unsweetened iced tea.”
The bartender began collecting the menus, and Twenty-Six stopped him. “Leave them please, but place the order.” After he left, Twenty-Six apologized. “Sorry, please look and if you want to change your order, we can. I need to be on the road in an hour and wanted to start the party.”
Diesel and Lilah both opened their menus and Diesel asked, “Do they make their own sauerkraut?”
Twenty-Six nodded. “Right in the back.”
“How’s the bread?”
“It’s dark rye, also made here. It’s delicious.”
<
br /> Diesel put down the menu. “You hit it on the head, then.”
Lilah put her menu down as well. “Okay, so the salad is probably what I would have chosen, but you robbed me of the pleasure of studying the menu, pondering the options, and making my choice.”
“How did you know what we’d order?” asked Diesel.
“A year ago he was sitting where you are,” said Lilah. “So one year from now, you need to remember a Reuben and a Cobb salad.”
“There’s that memory thing again.” Diesel shook his head in frustration.
The bartender brought their drinks. While they sipped, Lilah said, “You’re offering me Ciopova based on experience. And of the three of us here, I am the most experienced AI developer. But that still doesn’t explain why you would give me free rein.”
“Again, I was imprecise. It’s our experience I was referring to. Ciopova’s development is a constant progression. Think that she exists in my timeline, Thirty-Five’s timeline, and everywhere else.”
“I’m trying to imagine how amazing she’ll be if we keep working on her for ten or twenty years,” said Lilah.
“She is amazing because you work on her,” said Twenty-Six. “That’s the point. To accelerate her development, we’ve tried having Twenty-Five be in charge, having someone from up the line lead a team, and having you, or earlier Lilahs, run the show.” He shrugged. “Ciopova develops faster when you’re in charge. And I’m talking a big difference.”
The food arrived and Twenty-Six pointed to the screen. “The drawing is about to start. Do you have the ticket?”
Diesel patted his pockets. “Lilah, you had it last.”
“I did not,” she said indignantly.
Diesel smiled and pulled it from his top pocket.
She leaned close and whispered, “You carry a million dollars in your shirt?”
The machines that create the winning lottery number in Massachusetts use a Rube Goldberg collection of clear boxes, tubes, and ramps. Blowers send ping-pong balls dancing in a frenzy, and when one finds the path to victory, the number stamped on its side becomes a number in the game.
Diesel watched in fascination as ping-pong balls popped up, one by one, in the order he’d picked them when he bought the ticket.
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