Remember Me

by Kyle Robertson

  “Don’t worry. Raziel knows what he’s doing. You’ll get to settle your score, good luck.”

  As Chloe wiped off his hand with a towel, Araklimn spoke.

  “Godspeed to you, good sir, and I applaud your complement for ending my insidious torment.”

  “Krucks needed to go away. We watched your journey, and we never thought he was right in the head. Thank you for allowing us to deal with him.”

  “Let’s go. We have to get you home,” Chloe said and they began to travel back to the warehouse.

  Chapter Eight: Both the Strands Intertwine to Make a Taught Rope

  Raziel looked over all the calibrations Jocks had done to his teleportation platform when they returned to the warehouse. Fischer and Rembrandt heard what happened to Doze, and set-up a warrior’s send-off for their fellow BoltLayer. Keisha lead the proceedings. He was her partner.

  “Is everything within range?” Jocks asked Raziel.

  “We just need to tweak the power consumption housing. Borland's doing it at the bean canning factory. He just needed the specs.”

  “How can a Red Hook fabricate anything at a canning factory?” Jocks asked.

  “One, don't call them that anymore. It’s like calling a Caucasian a cracker, and two, he made those Hunter-Destroyers in that bean factory. You know, the banes of your existence for the last couple of years? He can fabricate.”

  Jocks stood back.

  “Damn, Raziel. Was there a love story happening cross-country? Where did this come from?”

  “When you share the same transport for a few states, you get to know your former enemy and realize the only reason you’re fighting each other was through design. A dark design. He saved my ass along the way. We gained a copasetic kinship.

  We all are humans fighting the same enemy. If we kill each other over petty nonsense, our enemy wins without lifting a finger. War is a craft, and The Rayless One is a deceitful craftsman.”

  Jocks was surprised at Raziel. He actually communicated with a Snaggerz and found a commonality. Raziel was the main one who wanted to destroy whoever invented the Hunter-Destroyers. But to actually gaining camaraderie with his sworn enemy made him refocus on their true enemy.

  Rembrandt came to the platform after monitoring the door.

  “Brakken shooed me away from the lookout. He said he had it and will alert you. Now, how does this thing work?”

  Raziel wanted to confuse him.

  “This tesseract time augmenting apparatus can manipulate the paradoxical temporal stream of space-time by retroactively folding fourth-dimensional time-cube aft-recorded periods by currently placing them here for a limited hop allotment for the individual to augment certain occurrences before we ever existed.”

  Rembrandt’s eyes glazed over and Fischer intervened.

  “When Raziel gets the power on, he’s going to time-jump Araklimn back to the autumn of twelve twenty-seven. Stop scrambling his mind, Raziel.”

  Raziel grinned.

  “He did ask.”

  “BORLUND’S BACK!”

  Raziel heard Brakken from the front and became elated he’d get to use his platform.

  “Okay, people! Move to the infirmary! Borlund’s in a rad suit and I’m about to put mine on! This is a fitted power source, but it’s still plutonium! If you feel like a sardine for twenty minutes while we seal the radiation power packs, you won’t terminally vomit with your hair falling out for a week before you die of poisoning! I’ll come to get you when it’s safe!” Raziel put on his suit while the rest sealed themselves in the infirmary. When he was equipped, he went outside to Borlund so he could help with the transport.

  They put the power sources into the cell seals to power-up Raziel’s platform.

  The full install took 30 minutes to make the environment safe for the rest.

  Raziel checked the radiation meter to make sure there were no leaks and turned on the platform.

  The lights began to blink prompting its eagerness to send something somewhere. They both got out of their suits and Raziel went to the infirmary.

  As he opened the door, all the BoltLayers and Snaggerz were more ready to get out of the small room for the number of people in it than see his invention work.

  “It sure took long enough! These Snaggerz smell like feet!” Mike berated his guests.

  “At least we don’t smell like sweaty armpit, Bolt!” They verbally retaliated.

  “Everybody calm down—it’s on. I just need an inanimate object to see if it works.”

  Keisha was distraught over this entire experience and began to take her pendant from her neck.

  “Here, this was given to me by my father before he died. It’s inanimate.”

  Raziel was surprised.

  “Yes, it’s inanimate, but I’m speculating it has a deep sentimental value. I’ve never tried this before. This is still the trial and error part of a working model. That means an error can still be prevalent because my calculations were off. I won’t sacrifice a priceless item when there are many trinkets strewn about this warehouse.”

  “How big does it have to be?” Rembrandt asked.

  “As long as it can fit on the platform and doesn’t weigh a ton, I can transport it.”

  Rembrandt held up his skarge crossbow.

  “Will this do?”

  Raziel thought a crossbow would do perfectly. It was hefty enough with complicated mechanisms in it.

  “Place it on the platform. Hopefully, you’ll get it back soon intact.”

  They all went to the transporter with Borlund waiting for them.

  “Who’s gonna be the test subject?”

  “We have to calibrate an inanimate before we do daredevil. Rembrandt’s using his crossbow,” Raziel corrected him.

  Rembrandt set down his crossbow on the platform.

  “Where do you want it to reappear?” Borlund asked.

  Raziel put a timer disc on the floor in the infirmary already.

  “I already put the reappear disc on the infirmary floor. Shoot there.”

  Borland scanned the crossbow then scanned the disc in the infirmary to lock-in the location calibration.

  “We did everything by your calculations. Are you ready to send it back in time?”

  “I hope we were able to augment the linear paradox by placing the return target elsewhere.”

  “Stop the jitters and transport it,” Rembrandt said.

  Raziel was procrastinating. This was when all his theories had to be tested. He walked to the console and looked around at every eager person ready for him to activate the transporter.

  “You all know this may not work,” he told them.

  “Flip the switch, I hate suspense,” Brakken said. Fischer agreed with him.

  “This is the only way to see where you messed-up, no pressure.”

  Raziel closed his eyes and pressed the pad.

  There was a whir as the engine spooled up, but there were no sparks or electricity when he broke the space-time continuum. Maybe a 5-minute augmentation wasn’t so severe as to garner the severity of the jump, but the crossbow disappeared.

  “It’s gone,” Fischer said. “Wanna check the infirmary?”

  Raziel became excited and frightened at the same time. It looked like it worked, but what would be in the infirmary?

  “Okay, let’s see if it’s there, and it still works.” Raziel lead the rest to the infirmary.

  He opened the door to see the crossbow on the pad on the floor!

  Borlund picked-up the crossbow, gave it back to Rembrandt and checked the pad timer.

  “Five minutes, thirty-eight seconds. This pad says you did it,” he told Raziel. “It didn’t feel hot or brittle. Does it still work, Rembrandt?”

  Rembrandt shot both cans sitting on their training range.

  “It still works and is still calibrated. What’s the next step?”

  Rembrandt was elated. All that work went for something.

  “First, I have to run this test fifty more time
s to make sure this is normal, and we just didn’t get lucky, then it’ll be time for a live organic test.”

  “Okay, I think Raziel has gotten his scientist mojo back. Let him get this done. He’ll be in the zone for a few hours. Let’ clean-up this sty.” Fischer motivated everyone to make the final event clean and neat.

  llll

  “I cannot believe Lord Sagen was in league with Lord Kirkland,” Araklimn said as he walked with Chloe.

  “That's the first thing you learn in Intelligence, trust no one,” Chloe said.

  “But alas, Lord Sagen had been virtuous since I was but a mere lad.”

  “He’s been there all your life?” she asked.

  “Aye, Klannis. Lord Sagen has been my manservant and mentor ever since I could recall.”

  Chloe began to think about the entire situation.

  “He trained you to be a royal guard?”

  “Lord Sagen also placed me into the notice of King Fauntleroy, so I could become one of his guard complement. That is why I could not battle against him with any effectiveness.”

  “Did King Fauntleroy agree with the elders?” she asked.

  “Neigh, their squabbles were legendary across the kingdom,” Araklimn shook his head. “The elders were akin to existing within our old ways. The king found those ways to be archaic, and that is why the princess commanded her army.”

  Chloe gathered all the particulars and had to tell Araklimn a very hard truth.

  “The elders played something we call in spycraft ‘The long game’. They played… manipulated you since your birth.”

  “Oh, tosh. Until today, Lord Sagen has never crossed me.”

  Chloe had to explain.

  “You were groomed to trust him. He probably sided with King Fauntleroy for years. He embedded himself within the royal family. He probably directed a few castle sieges to gain favor amongst the king’s knights.

  Doing all of the subterfuge took time, but when Kirkland slew the princess, getting you out of the way was easy for him. He has inside help. Krucks was designing your fate for years. He just trained you too well.”

  Araklimn thought about all she said and became depressed.

  “If what you say is accurate, then I was but an insignificant pawn my entire life. I was never destined to protect Princess Gwenlyn.”

  Chloe had to cheer him up.

  “But you did protect her. This travesty wasn’t easy for Kirkland. You were meant to be a nothing. We call it collateral damage. You were meant to die along with the princess. You were just too damn good at your job. Kirkland had to send you here to be slaughtered. There was a reason he put you here. Hopefully, we can send you back to correct this so The Rayless One will never exist.”

  “This was deemed to occur,” Araklimn said. “I had to witness the devastation of what Lord Kirkland sparked… and I would have never become familiar with you.”

  Chloe was thrown. Was he interested in a hard-as-nail female spy?

  “Oh, you mean our partnership. I guess we do work well together.”

  “Our cooperation is a natural action. I will clarify. My intent was for you. I was never in the stead of such a knowledgable damsel in my entire existence. Your entire affability, body, and soul, are appealing to my person.”

  Chloe felt strange about his statement. Then she became angry.

  “We’ve been through all of this crazy stuff ever since you got here last week. Now, we’re about to send you back, and you’re just telling me this now?!”

  “I thought you would be akin to my affection towards you from my relentless defense of you.”

  “That didn’t tell me anything. Your job is to rescue damsels!”

  “My duty is to rescue royal damsels. You would be deemed a peasant in the royal’s opinion. Not worthy of rescue. I rescued you for my benefit, not my doctrine.”

  She grabbed his doublet, pulled him in, and kissed him.

  “That wasn’t a trick or a ploy. I’ve enjoyed your company as well. We can just live in a doomed paradise until we get to the warehouse. Then we’ll send you back home and it’s going to be goodbye… forever.

  “They both kept walking to the warehouse in a doomed elation dichotomy.

  llll

  “This is the last rabbit test. I’m sending it outside to calibrate the range mechanism. Open the door and lure it back in with a carrot.” Raziel had done the inanimates, and this was the last biological trial before he could send a human subject. The only problem he saw was the rabbits had an insatiable appetite because the carrots were eaten quickly with blinding speed. It almost looked like a glitch in the system, but they were diagnosed with no biological anomalies.

  “I’m about to do this last test. This should confirm the distance targeting, so we don’t send him to America when it wasn’t called America.”

  “You’re testing to travel outside not transcontinentally,” Borlund said.

  “Distance differences aren’t the test. Pinpointing an area is.” Raziel showed a holo-map of the immediate area. It portrayed a holoimage of the warehouse. He pointed to the outer doorway. “If I can target that area, I can target anywhere. The map is global. This is just a calibration test. I can’t put a temporal arrival disk in Europe in the 1200s right now.”

  “And you thought of all this by yourself,” Borlund said. “Man, what are you smoking? I want some.”

  “It’s uncut curiosity. You’re your own supplier. Keep asking questions and your stash will never run out.” Raziel kept up the area calibration.

  Amidst all of this tension, Borlund thought they could use a little levity in this dark time.

  “I’ll move the HDs farther from the door so you don’t mesh a rabbit into a transport.”

  “This has a matter-mesh fail-safe. I won’t know what’s in England in twelve twenty-seven. He could mesh with a barrel or a cow. Either occurrence would be a messy sight.” He finished the set-up. “Got it. Bring the rabbit.”

  “Let me move the HDs just in case your targeting’s off.”

  “It won’t be, but go ahead. Rembrandt! Bring me a rabbit!” Raziel had finally done what was just a basic theory.

  As Borland programmed the HDs to move from immediately near the front door, Rembrandt brought Raziel a rabbit.

  “Is fluffy going to devour a carrot unnaturally fast again?”

  “You’re going to answer that.” He took out a shoulder camera. “When you stand in the doorway with the carrot, record it. We’ll find out one way or another.”

  Rembrandt placed the rabbit cage on the platform, put on the shoulder-cam, and went to the doorway with the carrot next to Borlund.

  “The mad scientist is at it again. I look more like one of your HDs than a BoltLayer.”

  “Like you’ve never played robo-dress-up before.” Borlund grinned. “You’ll only be embarrassed among friends. He may just know something. Just do what I did on our journey. If you don’t understand his perceived stupidity, let it go. He always has a reason.”

  “You don’t know Raziel the way I do. He enjoys embarrassing me,” Rembrandt said as he opened the door and bent down with the carrot.

  “I’m about to run the final biotest! I’ve targeted the outer warehouse and executing in five! Four! Three! Two! One, execute!” he pressed the pad.

  The rabbit disappeared from its cage and reappeared chewing on Rembrandt’s carrot!

  “It worked, but the carrot is half-way eaten again!” Rembrandt said. “I recorded it though!”

  He grabbed the rabbit for a bio-scan and gave Raziel the recorded disc.

  Raziel watched the recording. It showed Rembrandt holding the carrot, then the rabbit eating the carrot with it half-way eaten.

  “This doesn’t make sense. There must be a glitch in the system somewhere.”

  “The rabbit has the same status and biorhythm as it did right before you sent it!” Keisha called out.

  “Then I’m stumped. I did everything within range so this could work. I’m just missing somet
hing. If only rabbits could talk.”

  “I can talk,” Borlund said.

  Raziel saw Borlund’s daredevil emerge.

  “No. It’s obviously not ready for a human trial, no way.”

  I already said I wanted to smoke what you had. My curiosity is poking at me. My curiosity is sharp and leaves marks. The rabbits are fine, Let me do this.”

  Borlund put him on the spot, so he thought he’d return the favor.

  “Okay, is there just one cave you need to do this at, Keisha?”

  Keisha stepped forward. “What do you need?”

  “Borlund’s nuts in more than just doing this. I'll allow him to go, but if he makes it, you have to go out with him once.”

  Keisha wasn’t the only one with a blind-side tackle look on her face.

  “ You’ve been fawning over Keisha to Nevada and back. I Just want to see if a BoltLayer and a Snaggerz are compatible.”

  Borlund became uncomfortable immediately.

  “Okay, Raziel.” Keisha agreed. “If he’s not a pussy and he makes it, I’ll go out with him… once for science.”

  Raziel smiled.

  “She must think you’re cute because Keisha would never agree to that any other way. Come on and stand on the platform.” Since this was a very big deal, everyone gathered around.

  “Okay, it’s ready, are you?”

  “Let’s do it. I got a hot date with a cute girl.”

  Raziel smiled and pressed the pad. That was when things got weird.

  Mike looked at Fischer to see Brakken’s wig on his head.

  “When did you go into cross-freeing?”

  Fischer put his hands on the wig and saw Raziel in his underwear.

  “Where are your pants, Raziel?” he asked.

  “Who put this Snaggerz tattoo on my arm with lipstick?” Rembrandt was miffed. “What the hell is going on?!”

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist,” Borlund emerged from the front entrance. I found the problem.”

  He walked to Raziel and showed him his watch.

  “It’s five minutes fast,” Razel said.

  “And I didn’t adjust it. Are you catching what just happened?”

  Raziel thought about it.