Ryan Time

by Craig Robertson

  I was up and running, not in a flash, but in slo-mo. Molasses in January and the tortoise, of hare fame, both passed me. I neared a huge boulder, as the second fastest phramp—more oxymoronic, still—seized my left shoulder. This time I “fell” such that he was thrown into the rock. He slammed into it like he was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bang, face first, then slide, slightly flattened, to lie on the ground. Oh, how I wanted to stop for a photo memento.

  That left three more of the soon-to-be-ill-fated crew to dispose of. One was almost on me. The big one, the boiler attendant—whatever the hell that was—lagged way, way back. Captain Jij-kip-vik, which rhymes with dick, by the way, was either exceptionally slow, or exceptionally cautious. He brought up the rear.

  With one more phramp out of the fray, I could wrap this up, quick time. I jogged ahead. The last guy finally pulled up behind me just as I made a right turn behind a snow drift. As we were out of sight of the last two, I simply turned and, in a flash, punched my fist into the center of his face. It stopped him dead. After all kinds of crackly, juicy sounds, he slumped to the dirt. I was fairly certain I'd killed this one. I didn't feel too bad, however. Having just done the universe a favor, how could I chastise myself?

  When the big jerkwad rounded the corner, I decided to apply the KISS Principle. I threw a full membrane around him, and that was that. I leaned up against a large rock, awaiting the tardy arrival of the bossman. Eventually, he peeped around the drift.

  “I was about to give up and start the party without you, Jij-kip-vik,” I taunted. “Anyone slower than that boiler mate is really slow.”

  He spun to flee.

  “I really wouldn't try, Captain Captive. I'll catch you in five seconds, and I will be less happy than I am, now.”

  He poked his head around the corner. “Was there something I could do for you, my friend?”

  I pointed to a grouping of stones. “Pull up a rock, while we talk.”

  He actually tried to move one toward me, before I granted mercy and sat on one, near where he labored. He got the picture, and sat, with a goofy smile on his face.

  “I need some answers. If I'm satisfied with them, I might just allow you to scrape up what's left of your sorry crew and depart Earth while still among the living.”

  “Earth?” he grunted.

  “This planet. It's called Earth.”

  He shrugged. “Where would it get that name? The pallylama are unlikely to have named it.”

  “Long story, and equally unimportant. First, I have to know. What's a boiler attendant doing on a space ship?”

  He looked surprised that was my first question. “He works on my ship.”

  “I know that, either that, or he's your girlfriend. But what space craft has boilers?”

  “Ah,” he smiled in understanding. “In the very old days, ships had boilers to power the sea-going ships. My society is one of full employment. He's filling a post that cannot be eliminated.”

  “When was the last steam-powered ship launched, on your planet?”

  He shook his head. “Tens of thousands of years ago.”

  “Sort of a long time to hold open a position that's no longer needed.”

  “The guilds are perhaps more powerful than they are reasonable,” he responded with a shrug.

  Bunch a nuts, is what I say. Smelly nuts.

  “Okay, brass-tack time. Why are you here?”

  He got a decidedly uncomfortable look on his face.

  Ah. “Sorry. Brass tacks mean we now get serious. You understand?”

  “Yes, er, who are you, if I may be so bold?”

  “I'm Jon Ryan.”

  I gave him plenty of time to be impressed, you know, to recognize the company he now kept.

  “Ah, nice to meet you, I'm certain.”

  The puke hadn't heard of me. I disliked him more, immediately.

  “Back to why you are here?”

  “We were collecting pallylama. The one you saw us attempting to load was the second and final one we required.”

  “You guys live, like, six hundred and fifty eight lightyears from here. Why the need for pallylamas? You actually shouldn't even know about them.”

  “They are the rarest and most treasured of banquet foods. When a king is crowned, or a princess is married off, pallylama is a must. Only those with immense wealth can afford them, and they are obliged to demonstrate their wealth by serving it.”

  “You guys travel thirteen hundred lightyears for a novel snack food? That's seriously wrong.”

  “You asked. I answered.”

  “When do you come from?”

  There, just a flash, but I saw it. I'd blindsided him with a question he wasn't too pleased with.

  “We left Malton two of the Earth's years ago.”

  Clever boy. Trying to evade my actual question.

  “What year did you leave Malton, Galactic Standard?”

  “Galactic Standard?” he puzzled. “What is that?”

  Okay, so they came from a time before that was established. That would be, up until what would have been on Earth, if there was enough left for anyone to care, about the sixty thousandth century.

  “Name the year?” I said in my patented Clint Eastwood. And I'm serious. I patented it on every planet I spent any real time on. All the patent clerks of the galaxy think, by the way, they are dealing with a lunatic, when I do. That's because they've never seen A Fist Full of Dollars, let alone the classic Dirty Harry series. Punks.

  “I just told you. Two years ago.”

  The hard way, then. “You know what's nice about having someone screw with your head, by gaming your questions with oh so clever evasions?”

  His eyes widened. “No. What is nice about that?”

  “Absotively posilutely nothing. I have killed men for lesser insults.”

  “But, I am telling you only the truth.”

  No, he was not. I'd run a quick scan on his ship's hull. The problem was, he'd never believe what I knew, because, like, how could I. Here goes. His hull was built of a fairly routine mix of titanium, transparent aluminum ((AlN)x·(Al2O3)1–x, for any chemistry geeks out there), and nanoparticle amalgams. Once formed, a hull is subject to bombardment with all kinds of space nasties. Cosmic rays, solar winds, and electrically charged gas clouds, to name a few. The main inflicter of damage for any ship is radiation coming from the central star/stars where it was fabricated. Malton orbits a class A star. With me so far? Sorry if this is obtuse, but, you asked. Wait, maybe not technically, but, whatever.

  Stars mature along a specific path, we say, along the The Hertzsprung -Russell (H-R) Diagram. The bottom line is I knew what the radiation assault on that ship's hull had been. That meant I knew how hot the star was, when the ship was produced. That meant, using an HR plot, I knew approximately when the star was that hot. I'll allow you to guess. Was the damage present consistent with that star's present temperature? Yeah, not even close. With an error span of few thousand years, that ship was from the future, just like me. His ship was from more than a few thousand years hence, and less than sixty thousand centuries, Earth based. Whew. That was long, but, there you have it. Dude was prevaricating.

  I held up my laser finger. “Do you see this?”

  “Y … yes.”

  “This finger is mad. It's a mad digit.”

  “If you—”

  “Do you know what this anger appendage does, when it's incensed?”

  Without letting him stutter a reply, I sliced the boulder next to him in half. The top slid to the dirt, impressively.

  “Now, I will ask one more time. If you lie to me, again, two things will happen. I will know you have, and you will be half your present height.” I studied my irate finger a bit. “What time period did your ship depart from?”

  I learned something, there on that rock, that day. If you stress a Maltonian hexaplexers , they perspire. That sweat contains oodles of whatever makes them smell awful, when they're not perspiring. Yuck.

  “We're from thirty
seven thousand years in the future,” he said, as he dropped his head.

  “Now, you see how nice it feels to be an honest asshole, asshole?” I let him sulk a sec. “Why did you lie?”

  “We're not supposed to time travel.”

  “Says who?”

  He looked up like he was conversing with Forrest Gump's dumber sibling. “The Primal Dominion.”

  Oh, yeah. That was a galactic regional government that flourished, and faded, while I slept. A rather repressive and draconian organization, if memory served.

  “I am not from your time. I do not represent that band of petty dictators.”

  He would have blanched pale, if his skin wasn't so modeled and thick.

  “You use an Alcubierre warp drive?”

  “If, by that, you mean we travel in a FTL bubble, yes.”

  “And how do you do the time jumps?”

  “If I told you, you would threaten me for lying again.”

  “My advice to you, pal, is not to be so negative.”

  “We use a flux capacitor.”

  He looked at me, defiantly.

  “Okay. I've heard of those.” I drew in the air with both index fingers. “Three converging lines of light?”

  He squinted, dubiously. “I hope that's a joke. The FC is a phased-laser array controlled by an advanced AI. It destabilizes space/time, over a defined area. One can time travel through that.”

  “To get mastodon meat for a big party.”

  “You make it sound silly, when you say it like that.”

  “Why were you cramming it through your hatch, in the first place? If you butcher it first, you could stack it like civilized idiots.”

  That brought a disgusted look. “If it's not roasted whole, over a pit, it's not as impressive.”

  I pointed my left index finger up, my left thumb ninety degrees away from it, and set that on my forehead. “La-who-za-hers.”

  After that, I went and inspected the flux capacitor. I was this close to just confiscating it, but, I decided not to leave these frakking fossils as fodder for an X-Files miniseries. I took a bunch of readings, turned the damn thing off, and left for my crew, on the time ship, off in the future.

  NINETEEN

  President Payette, flanked by multiple Secret Service agents, stared into what was left of the Situation Room. The guards clutched their 9mm Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun so hard it was a wonder the metal didn't crimp. Their earpieces were alive with updates, shouted orders, and general pandemonium. They struggled to maintain any semblance of focus. Chunks of the first floor were still tumbling down, the alien ship had vanished, and Lord knew what else threatened their president.

  By Frank's side was his oldest friend, and most trusted ally in Washington, his Interior Secretary, Russell Williams. They'd gone to high school together, even dated some of the same girls. Back in the day, ironically, the highest office either ever held was treasurer of the homecoming dance committee. Oh, how the times, they had changed.

  Dusty light filtered through the gaping hole where the Secret Service Office, and a large section of the Oval Office above, had once stood. “Hell of a day,” observed Russ.

  “Hell of a day, indeed,” Frank responded, distantly.

  “Sir,” interjected the Deputy Director of the Secret Service, Atsila Grayfeather, poised over Payette's shoulder, “I really must insist we get you to a more secure location.” She shifted her shotgun in her hands.

  “Thank you, Atsila,” he responded with surprising calm in his voice, “in a moment. In a moment.” He held up a palm to reinforce his desire to linger.

  “They got to you like you were sitting in a house made of butter, protected with butter people,” mused Atsila.

  “They certainly ate our lunch, didn't they?” he replied with a grim chuckle. “Butter and all.”

  “How many did we lose?” asked Russ.

  “Depends how you tally it up.” She sighed deeply. “Ten agents, three cabinet officers, the Navy chief, eight staffers, and a dozen Lithuanian diplomates and their families on a behind-the-scenes, once-in-a-lifetime tour of the White House.”

  “Where's the wiggle room in that body count?” Payette puzzled.

  “Sherman, Jones, Ryan, and the one with the burqa. They're gone. No body parts or sightings. The sons of bitches seem to have taken them prisoner,” she replied, grimly.

  “'Say, what do you remember most about the Payette Administration?' asked a future high school civics teacher,” stated the POTUS.

  “I give up,” Russ responded, “what did some future high school student recall most prominently?”

  “That's when we had our first actually documented alien abductions,” responded Payette.

  In spite of the desolate surroundings, Russ had to guffaw out his nose. “Those were the days, my friend,” he was finally able to observe.

  “We better get over to the bunker under One Observatory Circle,” Payette said quietly.

  With profound relief in her voice, Atsila Grayfeather stated, “There's a chopper waiting on the North Lawn, Sir.”

  “What happened to the South one?” asked the POTUS.

  She nodded forward. “Pretty much what you're looking at here.”

  “The North Lawn, it is, then,” concluded Payette.

  *********

  Located in the bunker under the vice president's former residence, was the New Situation Room. One Observatory Circle was formerly the vice president's residence, because, now it was the president's residence. In the hours since the alien attack, no decision had yet been made if it would be renamed The White House, or if the Situation Room, itself, would still, also, be called the John F. Kennedy Conference Room. The Secret Service was referring to One Observatory Circle as Residence One. Maybe that label would stick. Maybe, if humankind survived the rest of the day.

  The chamber was smaller than the original Situation Room. Around half the people who were part of the violently interrupted meeting, two and a half miles away, a couple hours earlier, were present. The remainder were dead, badly injured, or too hysterical to be of any use. The new Head of the Joint Chiefs was Army General Pierce Whitfield. Darlene Masterson lost an arm, a lot of blood, and was at Walter Reed trying to survive the nine hours of surgery she would need. She was Air Force. Her replacement, and the dead Navy Chief's, were in route. But, the meeting couldn't await their arrival. It couldn't wait for anyone.

  President Payette surveyed the assembled. Aside from the vice president, who was just about to arrive at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, and the three cabinet officers lost in the initial attack, everyone important was there. Frank worried that it might seem maudlin or headline grabbing, but he also had insisted that the minister of his non-denominational church be present. Yeah, he needed all the help he could get. Beth Jackson had been on vacation in Bimini two hours earlier. Poor woman looked to be in shock from her Mach 2 flight in an F-16.

  “Let's get started,” the president stated with an edge to his voice. “Absent Drs. Sherman, Ryan, Sadozi, and Jones, I've appointed Dr. Francesca D'Agostino to be the director of the scientific team.” He pointed to a well dressed woman of middle years, sitting a few chairs to one side.

  She nodded back with a stern face.

  “She was working with the Geneva Group, up until recently. About a week ago, she joined Dr. Sherman's people at Stanford. Tank spoke very highly of her, so she's in the hot seat, like it or not.”

  “Mr. President,” spoke up Nick Fruba, the Director of National Intelligence, “I hate to seem … well, let me just say it. Isn't she Italian?”

  Payette looked from Nick to Francesca, then back to Nick. He lowered his gaze to the tabletop. “Well, Nick, she was Swiss when I met her about an hour ago. What the hell kind of question is that?” The POTUS was hot.

  “We … well, Sir, with all due res … respect, we're—”

  “Nick, do us all a tremendous favor and shut your damn mouth.” He pointed wildly over his shoulder. “We just got the ever-liv
ing shit kicked out of us by some very nasty aliens, back there. If they so much as think bad thoughts about us, Earth'll probably explode.” He had to stop and try to regain his control. He found it, however, nice—too nice, in fact—to unload on some one. “Nationality is out the window. Do you have any concerns I care to address?”

  “No, sir. None.”

  “As I was saying, Dr. D'Agostino will be our lead contact from the various scientific teams. Dr. D'Agostino, would you please brief us on what we currently know.”

  She stood, and unconsciously smoothed her dress. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she replied in a faint northern Italian accent. “In the limited time since the attack, I'm afraid we've learned very little. The alien spacecraft descended the atmosphere at tremendous velocity. Yet, thermal imagining shows it did not heat up in a measurable amount. This, this is incredible.”

  “Is that important?” asked General Whitfield.

  “Yes, it confirms their technology is beyond anything we can comprehend. To pass through miles of atmosphere, after having been in the bitter cold of space, and not heat even a degree Centigrade is staggering.”

  “Ah,” he responded.

  “The craft departed in much the same manner. Unbelievably quickly, and without an exhaust trail, or any other signs of it ever having been present. Remarkable. Truly remarkable.”

  “Do we know where its gone?” asked the POTUS.

  “No, sir. Our radars systems show no trace.”

  “So, what, it just disappeared into deep space? What about the other two ships that were with it?” the Defense Secretary, Pat Hendrickson, asked rather harshly.

  “Once the ship that attacked matched the positions of the other vessels, they all sped off at an even faster pace to parts unknown.”

  “But … that doesn't make sense,” Pat followed up. “They sailed in here quickly, sure. But they didn't zip away in the wink of an eye or use any magic. Why would they leave in a different manner? Makes no sense.”