Time Travel Omnibus, page 1087
As I skipped light-heartedly down the gray steps and onto the grass, something fast and heavy slammed into my upper back, flung me forward on my face. I rolled, twisted, came up in a crouch, but the Director’s prosthetic had pulled away out of reach. His face was livid with fury. I grabbed at my bruised neck. The rolls of toilet paper had saved me from having my spine ruptured, but I still felt as if I’d been kicked by a horse. Three fat guards tore down the steps, batons raised. I could have killed the lot of them, but my job here was to keep a low profile (ha!) and save lives. A lot of lives. Millions of lives. Mission accomplished.
I sighed and held my hands away from my body. It’s a shame you can’t loop back into your own immediate history or I’d have seen a dozen later versions of me popping up from the gathering crowd, coming to my rescue. Nope, it just didn’t work that way. Maybe Moira—
Through gritted teeth, she was saying in my inload, “Damn it, Bobby, are you all right? Your vitals look okay. Hang on, I’ll be with you in a—”
They hauled me inside again and this time the lift took us down into the basement.
“On my way,” Moira told me. Then, in a softer tone, she said, “Bobby, honey, you done good. Real good. Nine million lives spared. Oh man. When I spring you, we are going to have a party, baby.”
#
“You are the worst kind of terrorist,” Director Vermeer told me in a chill, shaking voice. “In a matter of seconds you destroyed not lives but the very meaning of lives, the certified historical foundation that—”
“So the Martian logs are entirely destroyed?” I tried to rise; two overweight but chunky-muscled guards held me down. At least the functionary I’d stripped of his outer garments wasn’t in the room, although his pilfered clothing had been taken away and I suppose returned to him, or maybe held for some kind of forensic examination. I’d expected the place to be swarming with firefighters, ladders, gushing hoses, media cameras. No such thing. Evidently the vault room’s internal fire protection systems had done the job, but not in time.
“Entirely incinerated, you barbarian.”
“Thank dog for that!”
“And blasphemous mockery on top of this devastation, ‘Professor’ Chop.” I could hear the inverted commas. “Oh yes, I wasted no time checking your absurd alibi. The University in Suva has no record of you, no faith exists called Chronosophy, nor is there any Albert M.—”
I chopped him off. “True. I had to deceive you to gain access to those festering Martian plague vectors. You have no idea how lucky you are, Director. How lucky the entire world is.”
“What fresh nonsense is this?”
“In two days’ time you’d have—” There was a knock at the door of the curator’s office, a long narrow room decorated with holograms of flaring galaxies, rotating, peeling, multiplying nucleic acids, two lions mating rather terrifyingly again and again in a loop, and other detritus of Installations and Exhibitions past. A woman with a floral skirt down to her wrists said apologetically, “Pardon me, Director, but there’s a police Inspector here to speak to the, the prisoner.”
My heart sank. I looked up gloomily, and Moira, in full police uniform worn upside down, but with a peaked cap covering her short red hair, said, “Good afternoon, Director. With your permission, I’d like to speak to this man in private for a moment. Then we’ll be taking him across to Police Headquarters where he will be charged with this heinous offense.” She was carrying my backpack.
“Very well, Inspector. I hope to hear a full accounting in due course. This arson is the most egregious—”
My wife shepherded him to the door, and shooed out the guards with him. “Please take a seat, Mr . . . What should I call you?” she said for the sake of the library staff milling on the other side of the closing door. It clicked shut.
“I think you could call me ‘Bobby,’ honey. Delighted to see you, but how do we proceed from here? We can’t just stroll out and take a tram to the Botanic Gardens.”
“The machine’s out the back. No sense mucking around.”
“Who did you clobber, by the way?”
“Some poor cow downstairs. Had to drag her into the loo to get her uniform off her. She’s trussed up in one of their quaint cubicles. Someone’s bound to find her, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
Moira was hyper, on the verge of babbling; she always gets that way when she’s pulled off some amazing exploit.
“Okay, sweetie.” I stood up, groaning, and she marched me toward the door in a stern and professional gait. “Lay on, MacDuff.”
The lift took us back to the ground floor, where the director hovered, literally. “We have transport waiting at the back entrance,” Moira told him. “Let’s keep this as low profile as possible, no sense getting people hysterical. The braindrain is under sedation, he’ll give me no trouble.”
We made our way briskly through confusing corridors to the back, me giving a glazed fish eye to anyone we passed. There was no vehicle, of course, but the drab graveled back space was relieved by a handsome rosebush in a large wooden pot. Nobody was watching us. It’s amazing what an air of authority and slight menace can do. We entered the disguised time machine and Moira, in the pilot’s seat, took us forward a year. It was three in the morning when we emerged, so the place was deserted. But the city lights were bright in the crisp air, and from somewhere to the northeast we heard music and laughter. No plague. No epidemic of murderous nanomites from Mars. Another horrible future with its teeth pulled, made safe for humankind. Hooray, hooray.
“What’s up, sweetie? Let’s go back to 2099 and put our feet up.” She started to snigger. “My dog, Bobby, you were a class act with your legs jammed into a sweater and your boof head sticking out of some guy’s fly. Come on, what’s up?”
“Candidly,” I told her, feeling dreary, “I’m feeling dreary. How stale, flat and unprofitable are the uses of this world.”
“Come on, buddy.” My wife jabbed me in the ribs. She’s just a little thing, but her elbow is sharp, even through a stolen blue police skirt. “Remember our motto, and be proud.”
“A stitch in time,” I said without much enthusiasm. It’s the nature of our trade. You can change your future but not your own past. So you’re obliged to go further and further into the day after the day after, and track down tomorrow’s atrocities that can be reversed earlier in unborn histories you’ve never lived through, have no real stake in. Guardians of time, that’s us. We can go home, sure, as far as our first time trip, but no further back than that. No way we can repairs the horrors of our own past, the local history that made us: assassinations of the great and good, genocides, terrorist attacks, our own insignificant but painful goofs. It’s like something from a Greek tragedy or myth, seems to me sometimes. Doomed to fix everyone else’s atrocities and never get any thanks, and no chance to remedy our own mistakes.
But Moira was hugging me, and the sky was clear and filled with faint stars, through the light-spattered towers of Melbourne in 2073, which is more than could be said for some other epochs. So I hugged my wife back, and found myself grinning down at her. “Yeah. Okay. A stitch in time—”
“Saves nine,” she said. “Nine million lives, this time. Maybe our own grand-grandkids, if we decide to. So hey, let’s feel good about that, eh?”
“You bet.” I said. I did feel better, a bit. “Party time it is, honey.”
And we fell away into the future, again.
JUST ENOUGH TIME
Douglas K. Beagley
The Time Traveler entered Starbucks in a hurry.
There were five of us, the usual. I was drinking a mocha with whipped cream, trying hard to hold the hot cup and not look like an ass. I wondered if I should have shaved. I was going after Jenn, you know, nodding at what she said. I asked, "What did you think of the book?” and all that, and I thought it was going pretty well. I probably should have shaved. I thought my leather coat was good, but just about then I was worrying she might be a vegetarian now, or hate leather or something. Jenn plays all smart like that.
So the Time Traveler had pushed the door open roughly, and she stepped into the noise and smell. She looked around the room, sort of frantic and maybe disappointed.
How did I know she was a time traveler? Probably something about how fourth-dimension travel lends a subtle dream-like quality to things and people, as if they are only available to our reality through a profound mistake. Whatever. She was kind of a hottie, thin but curvy with really great hair, and we were all pretty stoked when she rushed right over to our table.
“I only have a few minutes. Please, please listen to me.”
Ted looked up and spoke first. "You’re a time traveler,” he said. (Ted is an ass.)
“Yes, I’ve got just a few minutes and I need—”
“I mean, seriously, you’re a time traveler! That’s fantastic!”
So, I guess we could all tell. She walked and spoke oddly, or she smelled wrong. She definitely had a funny smell. A bit like moldy plastic.
“Just listen, please—peanut allergies are a virus. Autism is triggered by the plastic filaments in disposable diapers. The only way to reliably cure all cancer—”
“What do I do in the future?” Sarah shouted, running her words together. Her eyes were wide and she was holding her hands up, kind of like a mime. I think she was a bit freaked out, but then Sarah is always a bit freaked out. I used to go around with Sarah, you know, until I realized she can’t cross the street by herself. I mean that in a metaphorical way. I mean, she could probably cross the street okay, really. But if someone I know was all sad because one of our friends had been hit while crossing the street, I would ask right away, "Was it Sarah?” because if you knew her you’d know that’s exactly how she is.
“What?” The Time Traveler looked at Sarah, and then at all of us, even at me, as if she expected us to be taking notes or something, drinking her in like she was queen of the future. She might have been going to cry or get angry.
“Do we ever get superpowers?” Ted asked. (God, Ted is such an ass.)
“No, wait—who wins the World Series next year? Or, like, should I buy Apple stock, or has it had its run already?” That was Roger. Roger is less of an ass than Ted, but you can probably tell not by much. Roger had a mustache for a while, if that tells you anything.
The Time Traveler put her hands on our table all serious-like. "Cancer. Damn it. You can completely prevent it by maintaining a certain bacterial balance in everyone’s intestines. Gravity isn’t a particle or a wave, you’ve got to stop thinking of it like the rest of physics. Fusion reactors can work, but they’re a waste of effort relative to—”
“Stop! I gotta know—are aliens real?” Okay, I asked that one. It was like my brain was in some kind of fog, honestly. You wouldn’t understand unless you’ve met a celebrity or a vampire or something. When you meet someone like that, you feel around and hunt for what to say, and nothing comes out, and then you just feel dumb and you think like mad until you can come up with something that isn’t "Duh, I love your work. Would you sign my forehead please? Duh.” I didn’t want everyone else to have a go and not have said anything myself, you know? And Jenn stayed quiet through it all, as if watching all smart like. So that was my question, and it got a good laugh and some approving nods. I think Sarah said, "Yeah, are they?” And I swear it would have taken the Time Traveler like two seconds to answer it, but of course she didn’t.
Instead she just looked more and more alarmed. She kept talking faster, like some auctioneer. She was sort of crying, and we all felt a little bad, except for Ted, who was oblivious as always. Stuff just tumbled from her lips. "You can double your life span by synthesizing fifth-sequence mitochondria. Don’t try to cure AIDS, that only makes it worse—focus on prevention. When Tyrone Shore is born, get him into therapy immediately. The Coleman Agreement will cause a horrible war—”
“Hey, what are your clothes made of?” Ted asked. And I have to admit, I was kind of curious. I mean, they looked like some kind of densely woven plastic, like a linen maybe, but the drape was quite pleasing.
All of a sudden, she was gone.
It was like the room sort of folded and unfolded again, only she was the only part that didn’t. I had a vague sensation of her passing through us, or through the whole Starbucks, or through everything. I’m not really sure. Felt a bit like throwing up, to be perfectly honest.
We were all quite impressed, though, especially by the last bit. Sarah and Ted both clapped. I thought that maybe Jenn would get all philosophical about life, like she does sometimes. That might improve my chances. You know, in a sort of "It’s graduation, everything’s changing, let’s do it,” kind of way. So we were all quite stoked, in different ways.
Then we all went to Sam’s Diner for pancakes. Did you know Sam’s serves pancakes until midnight? I didn’t know it either, but Roger really wanted pancakes and he has a way of sort of getting the group to do whatever he wants, and so we went to Sam’s. I don’t think they were very good pancakes, but then, what are you expecting at ten at night at a place like Sam’s? I think the syrup was real, at least, and I might have gotten a bit of a sign from Jenn.
We were snug in the booth, you know? And we brushed shoulders for a bit, like I might get in at some point. I think so, anyway. She plays all smart, but I bet I get in. Next week at the latest, or forget it.
By the way, I don’t really remember what the Time Traveler said. I just wanted to write all this down so I’d remember it, and I probably messed up the stuff about peanuts and cancer and all that. So don’t get excited or anything. You can’t trust what time travelers say, anyway. Who’s future are they from? Not mine. Not Jenn’s.
Whatever. I’m pretty sure she said the diapers and autism thing. I mean, I know she said something about autism, though it might not all have been connected. I’m definitely not putting my kid in disposable diapers, just in case. If I ever have kids, I mean, which isn’t all that likely, of course. But you never know. I’ve got time.
The End
APOLOGY
Sam Ferree
“At no point in the past or future will your life have any bearing on anything, at all,” the redheaded, twenty-something time traveler with a sleeve of tattoos tells me. “That’s why it’s okay to kill you.”
She is sprawled across my leather couch in the exact same position as I found her when I woke up to take a shower. She has muddy, brilliant yellow sneakers and they’re propped up on the armrest. I just bought that couch.
“Would you mind taking your shoes off the sofa?” I ask.
“Oh,” the time traveler says. She takes her shoes off, walks to the door and puts them down on the mat. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s nothing,” I say.
She is wearing a deep blue suit, but the jacket is hanging on the hook and she has the sleeves rolled up on her white dress-shirt. A green-striped tie hangs undone around her neck.
“So,” I say. “You’re from the future.”
“That’s the short of it. And that I’m going to kill you.”
“How did you get into my apartment?” I ask. Maybe I should call the police.
She shrugs. “Oh, they gave me a key. Comes with the service.”
“Uh, who’s ‘they?’ ”
“The Bad Day Company. They run this specific time travel service where people can pay to come back and kill you. Great stress reliever, but a little pricey. I had to pinch pennies for a month between my two jobs to be able to pay for this. And the suit.”
“A month?” I say slowly. Once, I sat down, figured it out and got very depressed when I realized I had worked for eight days solid to pay for my now muddied couch. Eight whole days calling people to interest them in car insurance. Not for food or heat or electricity, just that couch. It is a good couch, though.
“A month, yeah.” The time traveler puts her hands on her hips and strikes an intimidating pose that I’ve seen championed by teachers, managers, and girlfriends, the kind that seems to invalidate all my protests.
“Do you know how much rent costs in the future?” she continues. “Life is hard for a twenty-six year old, former philosophy and psychology student.”
“So, not much has changed in the future?”
“Bite me.” She goes back to the couch and pulls out what looks like a handheld game consol, but not one I’ve ever seen before. She’s playing Tetris.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” I say.
“You business majors are all alike,” she grumbles.
“How did you know I studied business?”
She rolls her eyes and points at herself. “Psychology major.”
“Well,” I say, “I’m going to take a shower.”
Maybe I shouldn’t go to work. In which case I wouldn’t really need to take a shower since I usually just stay at home on my days off, but the shower might clear my head.
As I take my shower I try to decide what I should tell my boss. “Sorry, I’m going to die today. I know I should have given you two weeks notice, but I just found out.” Better not call at all. So instead I try to decide whether or not to masturbate, but with my soon-to-be murderess in the other room it feels somehow perverse. Just before I turn off the flow I can feel the hot water start to ebb. What luck.
I don’t even realize I’m shaving until I cut myself. It’s pretty deep, right on the left curve of my jaw bone. This is the last day of my life. Does it matter if I’m presentable? Well, James Dean and Janis Joplin didn’t leave beautiful corpses, but they were important and I’m not. Maybe I should ask the time traveler if she’s studied Confucius and if he has any advice on the proper thing to do in these situations.
My apartment is a tiny, single bedroom affair, but luxurious for Chicago. It has hardwood floors—albeit a little scuffed—pretty good heating, and the neighbors are generally quiet.
