Time Travel Omnibus, page 1053
But here they were. Still going about their business. Clipboards and hand tools. Frozen in this moment before the machine came online.
In a day you’ll be lunatics.
Turning to his left, he shifted his weight to catch a large falling figure.
Only the figure was not falling. Harry, Mister Poorly-Trimmed-Goatee himself, stood precariously frozen in mid-step, eyes half-closed and mouth stretched oddly. Probably chewing his ever-present pistachios.
Aaron sighed and continued moving. The surreal labscape had the same fuzzy look as the storeroom and except for a scattering of darker distortions, the washed-out lighting uniformly infected the entire room.
The offices circled a narrow elevated walkway with three metal steps leading down into the pit where the machine sat. A collection of modules and equipment banks radiated out web-like from the center of the pit, dwarfing the relatively small control console at its hub. Unlike the sleek molded casings that enclosed the peripheral units and guarded the super-cooled plumbing, the console itself was in disarray. All of the control cabinet’s lower covers lay at odd angles on the floor and large circuit boards hand been swung out from the interior on hinged connections.
It was a mess. It was also a time machine, according to its creator, Doctor Francine Heller, the alternative energy guru and project chief who preached free energy lay in the untapped entropy of the past.
She knelt in worship before her beast, her back to him, two of the shadowy distortions flanking her.
“I’m in the lab. The whole team’s here near as I can tell. Except for us. Must be right before she powered it up.”
He remembered her mad scientist grin as she pressed the enter key and the way the grin slackened when nothing happened. No one said a word. She tore into the cabinet, sliding out circuit boards and moving multicolored jumper wires, mumbling to herself about destiny.
She’d then dispatched the two of them to the reactor room with instructions to reset any breakers that tripped during the test. That may have been what saved them, shielded them from whatever ripped through nearly everyone else’s sanity and sucked the stars away.
Leaning into his step, Aaron walked toward the frozen Doctor Heller. He was getting better at balancing and moving here. The trick was to use the momentum to your advantage. A struggle at the beginning of a movement and then a sudden breakaway. He had to be careful but negotiating the three stairs down into the pit was surprisingly easy.
The console lights and screens, like all of the other equipment in the room, including the fluorescent lighting, appeared blank, as if shut off. An effect of static time.
Aaron could picture an Old West snake oil salesman shouting to the gathered townsfolk, Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you can travel in time . . . but when you get there, it’ll be frozen solid. Lifeless.
The blurred shadows near her must be glitches in the headset or some other byproduct of static time. He peered intensely at the closest, the one to the doctor’s right as he approached. Like a thin floating column of oil in water hanging in the air, black and gray and brown as if ignoring the blue light from the survey rig.
Something solid in the middle . . .
He gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Brad asked.
Aaron didn’t know how to answer. Inside the cloud-like blur were dozens of tiny jet-black points clustered near the top of a thin twisting mass about two feet tall. He moved closer, crouching down for a better look. The object was bristly and covered with a short, coarse-looking pelt. Something oily coated legs that came together at the top in a jumble of twisted, half-exposed sinews, lacking any real body. Only clusters of black beads, eyes.
His pulse quickened in his ears and he shuddered. Every creepy eight-legged thing he’d ever seen was distilled into this abomination before him. The bodiless limbs were all feelers, pincers and smaller clawed appendages interwoven together to form the creature, like a taxidermist had used random parts to build his worst nightmare.
“Talk to me, Aaron.”
“There’s this . . . spider . . . thing beside the doc. It’s different too, not all blue like everything else.” He jerked his gaze around the room and swallowed loudly. “There’s a lot of them.”
The connection was silent for several seconds. “Did you say spiders?”
“Well, not spiders . . . exactly . . . I don’t know what they are, but they’ve got a cloud around them and—what could they be, Brad?”
“Don’t worry about it, buddy.” His voice was slow and calm. “Just leave Heller the package and I’ll bring you back.”
Brad was right. Just leave the package.
But . . . he moved his hand out to touch the thing beside the doctor. The haze around the creature extended several inches out from its body and as soon as his finger began to push through the hanging blur, his hand began to throb.
I must be losing it, he thought.
“Aaron?”
This might be the only chance they had to stop this doomed experiment. “Okay . . . okay. I’m moving.”
He edged around the creature, giving plenty of space to the thing he prayed was only in his imagination. He placed the package beside the console keyboard directly in front of the doctor where she couldn’t miss it when she stood. He steadied the package for several seconds until sure the repulsive force between the large envelope and the console wasn’t going to send it falling to the floor unnoticed. On the outside of the envelope, they’d written STOP in permanent marker and below that a few lines in a smaller script asking her to look at the contents of the envelope before continuing. Inside they described the immediate results of the experiment, the mass deaths and suicides, the burning cities, the plague of madness, and the winking out of the stars. Brad had even thought to tear some articles from the morning paper, including one from one scientist claiming that the earth was being pulled into an ever contracting null, a pocket in space and time.
Maybe. And maybe this was just hell.
They just had to hope she didn’t think it was a prank. Aaron’s initial suggestion was to damage the machine outright, stopping the experiment but now that he was in this static past, he wasn’t sure he could break anything.
He had been watching the blur, the monstrosity closest to him, looking into its multiple rat-like eyes. Several of the feelers along the upper sections of its legs had stretched outward.
“It’s moving, Brad! How could it be moving?” He scrambled backwards, lost his footing and fell. The same momentum effect that hounded his walking, initially slowed his fall only to smash him hard into the tile at the last instant.
He rolled onto his back.
That thing was moving!
The spindly legs shifted slowly, but there was no doubt in his mind. The spider was moving and it was coming after him. He pushed himself along the floor. The second one was moving too.
“Aaron, just stay calm. Did you put the package on the console?”
“Yes!” he shouted. He looked around the room. All of the blurs were in motion now, moving painfully slow in his direction. “Did you hear me? How could these things be here?”
He bumped a metal stair with his arm and realized he was still pushing himself away from the first one. He had plenty of time to get away. At this rate, the closest one was still a minute or more away.
But they were all coming for him.
Struggling to his feet, he stumbled once but managed to stay upright and survey the room. Several of the blurs were not moving toward him but to the doctor. The other ten—no, eleven—were coming his way.
“Aaron, I need you to be still for a couple of minutes to get a lock. Power’s getting really flaky.”
“Are you nuts? They’ll be all over me.” The spiders were still closing in from every direction. “Is everything back to normal yet?”
“Not yet.” Static popped in his ears. “But maybe we have to bring you back first. Just stand in one place long enough for me . . .”
“I can’t.” His heart raced, drowning out whatever Brad said next. His gaze darted around the room. The door to the hallway was clear. “How about outside. Can you get me if I go outside?”
“I don’t know the range of this thing, but go ahead. I’ll try.”
He moved toward the door, dodging around another of the atrocities, this one much larger than the first two. Arms and shoulders and legs straining, he forced the door open.
He didn’t want to abandon these people, his friends and coworkers, but he had to. He had to get away.
Stepping across the threshold he could see straight down the eerie blue corridor leading to the lobby. Inky smears shifted at the far end of the hallway, growing gradually larger.
Dozens.
He felt cold inside. Frozen like the blue stone faces around him. Sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes.
He looked back into the lab.
What was that one doing? It had moved in front of the doctor and taken the package in a cluster of its filthy pincers.
He pushed back into the lab allowing the momentum shift to send him plowing through the two creatures now blocking the doorway. The impact was like slamming into a wall, but he managed to part them just enough to squeeze through. Instead of the magnetic resistance he felt when touching everything else in this living nightmare, or the ache he’d felt when he touched the field that surrounded the first one, these monsters felt hot and rough, scraping and tugging at him as he passed between them.
These things must be impossibly fast in real time, he thought.
As he reached the stairs again, his stomach wrenched and this time he threw up, each convulsion causing his head to erupt with blinding pain.
“Power again,” said Brad. “It’s getting worse. I need you to stand still before I lose the connection completely.”
Aaron’s eyes refocused and he tried to move but his legs didn’t want to move. Behind him, inches away was one of the creatures, a half dozen barbed talons extending in the direction of his thighs. The shadowy haze surrounding it oozed over his legs and he could feel a numbness creeping up the small of his back.
He thrust himself away, muscles screaming.
“What do I do, Brad?” He looked back at the advancing monsters. Doctor Heller kneeling before the machine. His temples throbbed and every muscle ached from the constant exertion of balance and movement. The creature with the package had moved two yards away toward the stairs, passing two more of the atrocities headed his way. “It took the package.”
Brad’s voice was quiet and measured. “Aaron, you have to leave the package for—”
“I can’t leave the package,” Aaron yelled and then realized that he wasn’t yelling. He was laughing.
“Just calm down.”
Aaron felt a tingle across his skin and a hum building deep in his bones. He took a step backwards and bumped into a large multi-layered circuit board extending from the console. His eyes widened. “That’s it. I’ve got to destroy the control. They can stop me, but there’s no way they can fix the machine.”
He knelt beside Heller, leaning against her rock steadiness for support and pulled at the largest of the circuit boards. It didn’t even flex.
“You’re moving again,” said Brad. “Let me bring you back and I’ll give it a go.”
The icy blue light flickered and he doubled over, sharp stabs of pain in his gut. An icon in his visor blinked a warning. LOW POWER. He clutched his abdomen and forced himself upright.
Spiders surrounded him, the closest a yard away. More spilled in through the doors, slowly shifting blurs moving through people and equipment like arcane water flowing around rocks in a stream.
We’ve got to make this work. He wasn’t sure if Brad was speaking or he was remembering, but he was right.
He grabbed one of the corner posts of the control console and pulled himself up, using the extended electronics as footholds. His arms and shoulders protested, not even easing up as he began to climb with his legs as well. Resistance was impossible, growing, as if the universe was determined that he not ascend another inch. Something tore in his right calf and he drifted down toward the top of the enclosure, the last instant ripping by and knocking the breath from him.
He struggled into a standing position, wincing as he shifted his weight uneasily to spare his injured leg. Sweat dripped in slow motion from his face. A sea of blurs rippled outward across the floor beneath the icy blue light.
“Aaron, just stay put. I’ve got you.”
Two of the creatures were beginning to climb to cabinet, one to each side of him. “Sorry, buddy.”
He looked straight down. And stepped off.
He drifted downward for a long moment and then crested whatever rollercoaster-like delay the physics of this bizarre reality required and hurtled toward the floor.
He locked his leg muscles as his feet hammered down like pile drivers, an inferno shooting up along his nerves.
He body crumpled and he rolled, waves of pain washing over him, threatening to snatch away consciousness.
Something shifted beneath him, slow and hard, like marbles and tree limbs poking and scraping at his skin. He opened his eyes and stretched out his hands. A wall of oily bristles surrounded him, tiny eyes still tracking his descent, unable to keep up. Needle-like pincers and claws stretched. At least one of the things lay mangled beneath him.
The circuit board he’d targeted lay in front of the console, snapped neatly in half, wires and electronic components broken and sticking out at odd angles. Like dead bugs with their disgusting little legs in the air.
“Aaron, what’s happening? Your signal is getting weaker.”
He wanted to speak, to answer his friend but numbness spread through him, radiating out from the hundreds of tiny needle pricks dancing along his body. His eyelids were suddenly heavy and the crystal blue light was losing its color to growing grayness.
“Aaron, do you read me? I think—oh, my God—the stars . . .”
He let his head rest on the slowly undulating floor. They were around him, on him. He knew now they were trapped here. Maybe they always had been. Hungering. Lonely, maybe. Unable to escape.
Just like him.
Everything was cold. He wanted to gasp for breath. The wind on his skin was gone and all he could hear was his own faint thoughts, far away in the black.
PERPETUAL MOTION BLUES
Harper Hull
The Last Trip, Day 2
The taller old man in the group opened his backpack, pulled out a ragged, yellow rain slicker and quickly pulled it over his arms, up onto his shoulders. Behind him, his three equally elderly comrades followed suit and wriggled their weary bodies into their own waterproof clothing of different fabrics and colors.
“I hope Howard found new coats this time,” said one of the women, pulling her hood over her yellow-grey hair and tightening the cords below her neck.
“He’ll never find new coats, Jenna! Surely you realize this by now.” The yellow-clad man snorted, throwing a withering look back across his shoulder towards his elderly wife. “Like he’ll never find that part.”
The second woman in the group shook her head slowly and slipped her thin arm through that of the man beside her. He was leaning heavily on a thick, slightly curved stick of weathered wood. He was breathing raggedly and every step seemed to cause a grimace across his leathery, sun-beaten face. He stopped a moment and stared into the sunny blue skies above and beyond, the woman beside him smiling at him in a mournful way and rubbing his elbow with bony fingers.
“This is our last time, Eric.” She projected her voice to reach the man in yellow.
“You always say that,” said Eric, turning around to face her. “It’s never the last time. You’ll travel again. Both of you! If he makes it, that is.” Eric waggled a derisive finger at the wheezing man.
A short way off along the dusty road where the sun-scorched hills dipped to meet a narrow, dirty river a baton of lightning arrowed from the sky; a solitary black cloud was rumbling over the near horizon, a dismal blot in a canvas of blue.
“Why, it looks like a flash storm! How unexpected!” Eric said in a sarcastic tone, rolling his eyes.
The rain began to fall, heavily. The four elderly people slowly made their way along the road that was becoming slick and muddy beneath their feet. No one spoke as they reached the low-humped hills, followed the trail across them, and stopped on a slope overlooking the splashing river. On the near bank lay an upturned wooden row-boat. One edge sat off the wet dirt upon a small rock, and there were two oars lying on the ground beside it.
“Whose turn is it? Does anyone even care?” asked the sick old man, whose name was Jason. “You should do it, Eric, we’re all tired and it is for your benefit.”
“Let’s just go another way this time!” said the woman arm-in-arm with Jason, “if it doesn’t work out and we don’t get there, well, I don’t think I—we—really care anymore.”
Beside her Jason sighed and nodded his head. “I’m with Molly. I’ll happily risk it all ending in a week at the chance of a few extra days that are just different. This isn’t living anymore, is it? Was it ever?”
“Shut it, you two!” shouted Eric, “I’m sick to death of this. Go, if you want, I don’t care. Enjoy the light show. We’re going on as usual. Wait here, Jenna.”
Eric strode over-confidently down the path to the riverside, barely keeping his balance on the slick ground as the rain pelted off his coat. As he approached the upturned boat he slipped his backpack off and pulled a large knife from a side pouch. Grunting, he bent down and grabbed one of the wet oars from the ground and thwacked it against the side of the boat. A brown-and-yellow diamond-striped snake came wriggling quickly from beneath the boat, skirting the small rock. Eric leaned forward and chopped down with his knife, decapitating the snake in one well-practiced swipe.
“Us one thousand, five hundred and sixty, snake one!” said Eric loudly, with little joy in his voice, gesturing to Jenna at the top of the slope to come join him.
