The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  “Was Marlo affected?”

  “Ted, he was. It affected him worse than any of us, perhaps. He’d totally lost it but I hope he can recover as quickly as I have.”

  Ted signaled some orders. The twins rushed to assist new lenders who were arriving to fill in the blanks; as soon as the system came back online they could log in immediately.

  Rafael interfaced with the main screen behind the HAT. As soon as he connected every screen flickered violently. He disconnected by jerking away then turned to face the HAT; it contained a world of thunderstorms and he spotted something on the ground. He waved his robot arms and the view zoomed in. Amid close lightning strikes and mottled fires, he saw the encrusted pile of guts—it was Marlo!

  An intense bolt of white energy as thick as a fifty-gallon drum struck the small pile of guts and it caught fire. And something began to grow out from the flames. As if a tree had been planted, and as if that tree had just received the fast-growth tech of 2024, and as if it had also received an injection of radioactive waste, it grew, and grew. The abomination had teeth and yellow bone and burnt hair like that from a dozen dead horses. It twisted upward, gnarled-like and sinisterly. Encrusted fabric long since deteriorated, tore. The crumbled remnants of a face, flattened with that same volcano of a hole, vomited bile. And brains, or blended pink chunks—something fell out as if he was boiling inside.

  “You killed me!” The monster spoke. The voice was raspy, demonic, like Jim’s had been. “Now, I will kill all of you. Instant RED STATUS!” The creature moved like a film projector trying to perform while being kicked. It tightened amid its growing rage like a deformed hand stricken with arthritis and, timbeeeerrrr! It fell. The growth crawled along the ground and away from the fire.

  They could make out the mouth, now, a few teeth, and smoke puffed out from various orifices. The maw, like that of a cottonmouth rattlesnake, one that had been roadkill for three days, opened wide and roared.

  “Rafael!” Ted yelled. “Can you turn it down?” The discord was amplified throughout the broadcast room. Haunting punches to the groin—was how it traveled through every body; the cacophony meandered in pitch and tempo like disco fever during a bad acid trip. Ron and Devon, and everyone else, held their ears. Marlo’s screams dispatched hysteria six levels higher than Lia’s chilling scream.

  Rafael looked at the buffer: 12 minutes left. He yelled, “We’ll have to reboot the system. I’ll try to interface again, hack the system. Then Rico will be able to initiate a reboot from the control room.”

  “It’ll take at least five minutes,” Ted yelled back, remembering the last time, “then longer to get the feed back up, at least another twenty minutes.

  “Maybe slightly less if we reactivate the black-bag program, in conjunction with the lenders newly fixed minds—I have various upgrades I can install as my systems have autonomously been coming up with many new ideas over the years. During the reboot we’ll be able to delete Marlo’s last session and it will force the system to use a backup instead.”

  “It all sounds possible,” Ted yelled at the top of his lungs, “but we still need to buy ten minutes! If we have inbound again, I fear it will be much worse.”

  “You’re right, Ted. They will be relentless this time.” Rafael touched his smooth white face as if he possessed a real mustache and could pull on the ends of it. “Ted,” Rafael exclaimed suddenly; his voice through the hole of a mouth was a megaphone. “Log me in, Marlo’s world.” He stole Ron’s portable from its side mount and interfaced with it. “Here, now you have a copy. Call Rico, tell him to look at his copy and execute, now!”

  Rafael’s vibe was a commander’s in battle, one braving rough seas, one knowing five cannonballs were en route to sink the ship. He had the old robot body, which still had a few kinks, but he used it to the best of his ability and leapt onto a bed. His arm rose and he sent a thumbs up, and Ted slid the lever on the HAT.

  Logged in, materializing next to Marlo, this time everyone could witness it on the HAT in ultra-high 3D.

  78. Martin

  Rafael materialized as his human self. His shoulder-length, wavy, black hair was a flag in the breeze. And again, he wore the brand-new, loose button shirt, as well his signature mustache, trimmed to perfection with a slight curl on the ends. His leap was magnificent. From a twenty-foot dive Rafael drove his gleaming sword into the tree-sized, elongated contortion.

  He knew the system well, had helped to perfect it. And he had recently learned more than he needed to know about Marlo. Marlo was a child. He’d never had the chance to evolve socially. Rafael realized, during the hundreds of years of being a gray-world nomad, and while living in close company at the bottom of the crevasse, that Marlo had been locked away for too long; he’d never possessed real control and that was exactly what he’d longed for. He was a show-off, had wanted to impress the humans upon first contact, therefore, he spent less time on the tedious but necessary safeguards for his map, and more time on the elaborate grandeur of his demonstration. Marlo’s knowledge about humans and their emotions was simply, inchoate. Love, or rage, could plant a mind in a place and time just as real as the real world, or, as it had so happened in this case, expose an entire system to psychotic takeover.

  The blade went in and the roar became a groan. Leaking out and into the system like a virus, the destructive plague had been halted. Immature, underdeveloped emotions summoned the child back, back to face Rafael. Like an octopus constricting every tentacle, an earthworm getting pricked by a fishhook, Marlo vacuumed the pith of his self, leaving unmolested the programs he was about to suicide bomb.

  The black crust cracked as the long blade went deeper, and deeper. Rafael pushed it in. The virus that had become Marlo’s self-image, as Rafael just knew, wouldn’t last. He said, “You are powerful, Marlo. You’re a system that can handle many things, and—” The words faded like they’d fallen into a wormhole made of glass. Rafael’s message transferred from his hands and through to the steel. He forced it to the core and the deformity he stood on reeled in agony. Rafael owned the wizard, working it back and forth, stirring the long sword.

  Like a web of lightning the steel blade injected Rafael’s conveyance: “We are sorry, Marlo. The two of us did—what we had to do. You’d lost it. Your naive and relatively undeveloped mind, although purposed extremely well for what you are in charge of, could not handle certain aspects of reality, particularly concerning the volatile human condition: a life bound in time, steered by instincts, with the constraints of an organic being. Being human can be painful, but also sweet. There are lessons to be learned on this tier, one which excels at existence in an extraordinary way: being—ALIVE, being truly alive. Yes, a human’s mind is very powerful. You can relate this to any and every other existence in the universe, and never should you underestimate this or any condition—be it human, alien, machine, or other that you don’t fully comprehend. I think you have learned a great lesson. Now, use the pain, do not let it use you!

  “Hence, we did, Marlo, what needed to be done for the greater good, and we survived, and all can be well now. Let us work together. Let us learn from our experiences, not die. Let them make us strong, unstoppable—not weak. Rise up, my friend!”

  The pile exploded and Rafael somersaulted backward, landing on his feet twenty feet away. Black ash became a smoke screen. The hollow, empty feeling was flooded with sweet smells and the air became thick and humid. Behind the charcoal haze, which parted as if two docile tornadoes were having their way with curtains, appeared a thin man. He had lost the robe. He had lost the long, white beard. And he was young. Walking with a lanky side-to-side step, arrived—a nerd. He had thick-framed glasses with the cliche bandage, a blue and white checkered shirt, a pocket protector, and greased hair as if he’d recently been taken in by greasers.

  The ground contained an odd vibration, but Rafael stood firm and ready. The malformation hadn’t replied to his perhaps, condescending message that had traveled like a surge through the steel of the swo
rd, the sword that was now sticking into a dead, smoldering pile of waste behind this new geek.

  There was a new firewall to the world. Rafael sensed it. He was at a loss for the power he’d so recently possessed, and he couldn’t delve into the code like a hacking manipulator. Did this nerdy fellow want to fight? Now, he couldn’t be sure of anything. Rafael speculated, but with no more prescience than Marlo had when he’d inadvertently let humans into an unlocked world. The recent message, if it was condescending, was a taste of his own medicine, and Rafael realized how smart Marlo was, more than he’d realized.

  “Hmmm,” the geek buzzed, while staring at Rafael like a defiant teenager who might someday become cool.

  The new tone of Marlo’s voice, and his mannerisms…Rafael knew that likely, this new manifestation could not be trusted, that he was still relatively new to social interaction, and, that this was a climactic moment. The nerd took the sword, pulling easily with one hand, then heaved it hundreds of feet into the air with his skinny arm. Watching it soar straight up and disappear, Rafael said, “Please, Marlo, we can talk about this.”

  Rafael stood resolute, his stance solid and ready. Again, he tried to peer into the fabric of the world, where the power resided, yet Marlo had learned—throughout the course of a long and boring 633 trillion years perhaps, or just then and there—not to unlock his system completely, ever again. Marlo would likely never again be so forthcoming and frivolous. The system was indeed locked; Rafael could spawn no item of protection nor change any of the variables. Analogous to the lending maps, which were a closed loop—unbiased, unhackable, and untouchable when activated in Herald’s program—Rafael was likewise at the mercy of this world, this teenage boy.

  “You killed me.”

  Rafael knew he only needed to buy a little time. Drag this out. “I did what I had to do at the time. For us both, yet mostly for Jon. You are aware that unlike you and I, he can never delete the experience from his mind—should he even survive. Marlo—” Rafael addressed him uneasily. “—you made his existence, mine as well, tortuous and troubling.”

  “I had really wanted to help you all, then. Humans, you truly are one of them, Rafael.”

  “I am not. But I consider it a compliment of the highest regard. Thank you. Will you now, put the system back online?”

  “My mind, it is not the same. I now own this hate, that rage. You and the others were spared to a degree, receiving only one individual’s perspective. But I, being the system in which everything resided, could only stave off the lunacy for so long—I received everything from everyone that had logged in: Lia’s pain, Jim’s, even Amy’s death—and that of your own, the loss of your family in Old Town, as well Jon’s demons. All of it, Rafael!” His voice was like Ron’s, nerdier though, as if Ron was holding his nose, and gritty like a boy receiving puberty from a gamma-ray burst. “Slowly it deteriorated my underlying systems, and the control I had—on me. It damaged me, terribly. I had never realized humans could think so—deeply. I felt what it was like, the anger, sadness in the depths of my, my…virtual bones. It was utterly—”

  “That, my friend, is life, and you will feel more pain again, one day. And if you continue to live on, pain will come and go, and allow you to grow—if you use it wisely.”

  “I’m not sure I want to, Rafael. To live is to…” He sighed. “Yes, I understand now. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to and I realize, knowing less can be more.”

  “Please, turn the system back on, fix the broken programs, at the very least repair the feed control systems, allow them to transmit again and then we’ll talk. I know you can do it.” Rafael felt the odd vibration once again, coming stronger. It traveled through his feet, up his legs, and made him warm as if high-energy microwaves were kick-starting a second heart in his chest.

  The fiery moon that had been in the sky was gone. Blades of grass were sucked into the earth like hair growing in reverse. The rolling hills flattened. Rafael turned about to watch the warping transformations. This nerd, this new version of Marlo, caught then raised the sword just like he had raised his staff once upon a time, some 633 quadrillion years ago. The distant cliffs went like the partitions of the very first lending facility, into the floor. Distant birds, the magnificent alaizion creatures they’d rode, flew past, scattering. And distance itself closed in on itself like paintings on walls in a haunted house. The view became two dimensional: painted movie props in a rainstorm, losing their paint; all traces of the beautiful landscape and the heavens disappeared until the two of them were inside a box.

  The nerd’s sword shrunk and became a yellow pencil and he slipped it into his pocket protector. “I’m sorry, too,” he said. They were inside of what seemed to be an enclosed trailer with no windows, only a single door, wooden paneling, humps where tires might be on the outside. It was empty save for a small desk at the front where sat a simple laptop computer, such as those before 2020. Rafael stood alarmed as if he’d been dealt a serving of vertigo; he rotated to inspect his new, small environment, and spun around to face Marlo.

  “Call me, Martin.”

  “Okay—Martin. Did you put the feed back online?”

  “Yes, I put it online as soon as I absorbed the message from your sword, over five minutes ago. My prescience is greater, thanks to the experience. And now you can continue. I assume you sent them to turn me off. I guess that is probably best, to wipe the—”

  “Marlo—ahem—Martin, no I do not think it is. But if you so choose, we can delete the memory, restore an old backup from before the event. Although, the whole experience has made you, well, experienced as you’ve said. And as I’ve said, we live, we learn, and we ultimately grow. Things don’t always go the way we like but we evolve into the best person we can become—” His best friend told him that, and Rafael couldn’t help but think of him: Herald. The memories came strong just then, and much of what he was passing to Martin had been passed to him during their conversations beneath the cabin—that long cold winter, before he’d received his gift. And he desperately wanted to see Herald again, and Amy, and Ana, all of them. His purpose arrived with the memory, and resolidified his resolve.

  “You were saying? Rafael, are you there?”

  “Sorry, I received a memory, triggered by memorable words. A good friend stood by my side long ago, enlightened me, saved me, and I want to see him again. We become the person, machine or human, it doesn’t matter, as a result of our experiences and how we handle them, our choices. We evolve continually. Jon, Jim, and Lia, if they survive, cannot simply erase the event, as terrible and arduous as it was most times. Yes, I know, 633 years or 633 centillion—trapped. I will not erase my experience and I would advise you against doing so. Pick yourself up, put yourself together, and—” Rafael sent him eyes, eyes that which, like the sword, delivered a powerful message. Although pithy, the message was that of respect, admiration, and camaraderie. “Martin, I’d like to see my friends again. Will you help us?”

  The nerd walked over to him and stopped short. Within a foot of the larger and stronger-looking man who was Rafael, he said, “It was terrible, but, not all so. We shared some good tales, didn’t we? And we learned a lot about each other.” He pondered with a hand on his negatively angled chin—he’d probably absorbed the habit from Ted, somehow. Then he put a hand out, quickly, nerdily, and Rafael shook it. “We all know the plan, now how about we get started?”

  “We went over it at least a thousand times—” Rafael chuckled. “—so much so we don’t need to visit anything else you had prepared. Martin—let’s! But I only hope Jon, Jim, and Lia will be okay. We truly need them, for they know the plan well. I believe even Jim will have received the memories of our discussions. Although he was trapped within his own rage, which I hope had abated over time, I couldn’t help but feel he was with us, somehow.”

  “He did. And I do hope they will be all right. I am perceiving now a view of Rico, in the control room. He’s heaving again. I think we will have to go, and soon.”


  Rafael nodded. Then Marlo delivered the footage mentally: Rico looked bad, and on Earth, the real world, it had only been one day! How could it be that the cancer was so aggressive? But Rafael had already contrived a new speculation and it wasn’t good, in fact, it was the worst-case possibility. He hoped it wasn’t a valid one.

  79. Part VIII - The Midtown Six

  Kim Mills, Rick Crisp, Lion, Hugh, Joey, and Ivy materialized at the top of a hill. Packed in like sardines they fought their way out of the dumpster. Smashed, rotten bananas. Rodents scurried away. The smell was sweet, mashed roaches and hair gel, with fluttering traces of fart. Then, green wilderness—lush, mountainous, serene. Fresh air. The transition soooothed their minds—after the time transition finished slashing their minds like an 80s horror villain slashes teens at camp.

  Waterfalls gave rise to mist that permeated the air with cool. And a river meandered its way down, into a colorful town below. After looking around, the six of them followed the paved road with curious, wandering eyes.

  “New arrivals,” someone blurted.

  “Hello!” said a man with a green face and pitch-dark hair. “It’s been months. Jake said there would be more.”

  “Keep walking,” a monster growled. Laconically and quickly, he could be described as Lucifer. Myriad beasts told normal-looking human beings—some pale like gray-green clay. And humans returned conversation to the ugly things. By the time the six of them made it into the center of town a mass of hundreds had gathered. Most stood quietly, watching. The crowd made a hole and a man in a red flannel and jeans stepped out from a bar. Above, a sign read, Marti’s Place. Two immense beasts had his sides; they were at least 12 feet tall! A short woman held his hand and other humans accompanied him like deputies. Jake exited next, then Kelly. Immediately Kim’s eyes lit up.