The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  Everything about all of it was weird. Weird: watching them grow old, using his technology in ways unfathomable—as if he’d known all along that he could make it do that. And too, it was bizarre watching Herald earlier, before he said, “It’s ready, we mustn’t waste anymore time.” Then he interfaced with the still-working systems hidden on the dark side of Frisson: Herald punched the keyboards with his old fingers as if they were those of a twenty-year-old, and he dictated with his mouth as if he was spewing every, as well unknown languages, making the computers come to life like green, dark energy entering the visible spectrum for the first time ever. He must’ve been controlling the others with his mind, too, for the entire room was as if it'd been injected with Christmas!

  But the weirdest part was how it felt, getting young again: spiders being hatched beneath the skin, skin that got warm and bubbled as if the creatures were crawling around and growing. It tingled, and happiness poured into Jim’s mind. Though, as he looked across the room to Herald and Ana, his mind told him he had to deny it, and feel sadness. Seeing Ana get older than she already was, knowing that she was giving away her life force to some redneck from Tennessee; that by some miracle this perfect couple met his brother once upon a time; that by some extreme measures still unknown, a man of his word, with Ana always by his side, pulled off the impossible—saving him.

  But how could anyone miss Big Jerry, Jim thought sarcastically. And he thought of the paradoxical, unfathomable, grand life he’d lived because of his huge older brother. Jerry: the man could stand out in a crowd of millions like a redwood among weeds. And undeniably it was all because of this by-chance meeting. He owed the fantastic, beyond-perfect life he’d lived to his parents-in-law—no, they were his parents. Then Amy opened her eyes and looked up at him.

  He’d trimmed her hair, by about two feet; she trimmed his by three and a half; the town barber could fix them up better after their arrival. Jim weaved her magic silvery white through his fingers. Beautiful, he thought again, returning the enamored gaze she was nailing him with. The hair made her look like a space hero in an outer-space science-fiction movie, and it so contrasted with her tan skin. And he knew she was trying to read him, because he was trying to do the exact same thing: to multitask his mind as if they were still some sort of dead god-posers exploiting the higher levels obliviously. But they could no longer read each other like that, and it was…relaxing.

  Amy told him they had time, so they wasted two hours doing nothing that was everything that matters. Her father revealed much to her with his final transference. “Rest,” Herald had said, winking with an ancient eye, “is a requirement.”

  The love-making session had, though, been a little—goofy, like trying to do it for the very first time, having forgotten somehow. They’d started laughing and almost gave up because it was just so funny. But enough seriousness eventually came and the end was like a pair of dud firecrackers. The fuse had long since went into the hot spot, but the explosions were untimely—stuttering sizzles at best.

  “It’ll get better,” she said: the first word since, and the final trickle of a laugh that had to pass for orgasm fell out of her mouth. Her head still didn’t move from his chest but she was in a position to see him, sending eyes up to maximum. “You know, Jim. It’s weird not being able to see your thoughts.”

  “It is. A lot is weird—and the exact same word has been bouncing around in my head. I feel like a baby again, or better yet, an embryo, one that knows how to do everything but has to use these hands—” He wriggled his fingers again, but this time tickling her hip bone. Amy giggled and squirmed, then gave him some payback.

  “…okay, okay, you win.” Jim squirmed twice as much when she…

  “It’s coming back quickly though, Jim,” she said, after the easy win.

  “Amy, I just wanted to let you know, I am going to make it up to your parents. What they gave us… I almost wanted to explode from that standing lender casing and slam the big red button. I mean, they must be a thousand now, at least that’s how they looked when it was over.”

  “I saw you crying. You’ve always been the emotional one. But on the inside, I was crying too. My dad’s last words before he went in, well, he said, ‘Amy, you are the strongest person I ever had the pleasure of meeting.’ And he told me how much he loved me with words that…”

  “I know it’s…hard…” Jim was tearing up too.

  “He said for me to put my head up, shoulders back, stand up straight, that he wanted me to be strong, for him, and my mother—” She held her breath and pushed it out. “—he said that if I cried he…”

  “Your parents mean everything to me. And when we get finished with this mission—” The red light in the corner of the room started flashing.

  “Exactly, when we finish, and for damn sure we are going to! Now what do you say, how about we get to the bridge and take this giant smack dab into the heart of Jewel City?”

  “Let’s do it, Aim!” He turned the dial on the side of his lending headgear. The light went from dull blue to neon; Amy did the same. “I’ll put the bots online.”

  “And I’ll head to the bridge. We should’ve passed Mars by now, not much longer.”

  On one side of the bed she got dressed; Jim on the other. Before she finished pulling her pants up, and still topless, he turned to see her. “You're so beautiful, you know.” Like a teen in love he just couldn’t help it. She turned around to face him then pulled her tight shirt over her head, over the lending gear, over her small chest, then slowed, accommodating the silver sheen of her uniform.

  “You're…not so bad yourself, Rock Star,” she replied. They stood frozen for a minute, as if trying to read each other’s minds. There was something there, but nothing like the other tiers. Their smiles were as if powered by something completely new, and the same resolve, and the same rock-solid dauntlessness—and passion.

  They jumped over the bed. The clash was one universe clashing with another. And they ripped each other’s clothes off—this time making it count!

  109. The Feed

  He knew he’d been inside for many days; it was as if, he was stepping straight into the future. Additionally, the pain endured from the fighting in Midtown, the incessant ice-world tribulation, as well the nightmarish bowels of Lion, in combination with low-power mode, had lengthened the 48-hour deadline of demise to more than a week. Months and months had passed inside, and here, on the outside in the real world, little more than a week had passed since Kim and the others had arrived from Jewel City.

  Now, Jerry stepped out from the third building down the line. Old robot Boron stood next to the green-suited version of his inveterate bartender friend, Bart. And behind them stood thousands.

  Humans. Ready. Waiting. None moved except the old sex bot: he fell flat on his face. Then, Jerry, a tall green-suit possessing solely the outer shape of his once human form, dropped to his knees.

  Selection had been random, but many had been saved. Jerry knew everything just then. All of it flooded into him as if the white hole had been a dream: a long night’s worth of DELTA rehabilitation, THETA data infusion, and REM reconfiguration followed by the ULTIMATE awakening. Rising from the chair was acceptance of the crown and the short walk out of the building assembled a comprehensive realization of what he’d acquired. He knew what had gone down. He knew the why and the how, the plan all along. And he knew exactly who had perished, he knew, who had been sacrificed and it ripped his figurative heart from his figurative chest. Carmen—was gone.

  He didn’t want to get back up, not this time and not ever again. On his knees, he reeled in agony, twisting and screaming—if he was still human it’d be a core workout on omnipotent roids. Then he pulled his arms together and fell forward releasing a roar that, like a hundred-mph gust, sent the crowd five steps back.

  Pain, after all he had been through, the incessant agony, and now this tormenting cherry on the pile of shit that had to pass for his cake; there was always more, more, more!

&
nbsp; It was the last time he’d seen her that really wrenched him into a knot: the memory of their last glance, how she jerked away and he just smiled, then he laughed and pushed on: pumping and slamming himself into Kim. Everything was intensified now—as if the new system was a juicer to his memories; he was a new something with a hypersensitive mindset. She was supposed to be the last love of his life! They’d spent centuries fighting together, for exactly what he had now. Freedom.

  No! He didn’t want it. Not without her.

  Why was he fucking someone else? A second roar tried to move the crowd, but this time they pushed back.

  He knew he hadn’t been himself, not at the core anyway, but he’d have to live with the look she’d sent him and he knew he’d see her face every single day for the rest of his life—if this could be considered a life. The spirit in her eyes had faded to gray as if they were being embalmed; and the way she lost her knees.

  But Jerry’d just smiled. He loved giving it to Kim like a begrudged devil—it was the best worst day of his life; he would have to live with that too. Carmen was gone for good, her body was fish food, that or the resurrected land beasts had ripped it apart. The creatures of Boron’s ark, all his now. They’d also consumed Patrick and Marti and Roger and countless others whom with he’d been through hell. They fought together, laughed together, cried together, and died together countless times.

  No. Jerry didn’t want to get up. He stayed low and tucked himself into a ball, and his figurative muscles bulged like pumping hearts. Then shadows enveloped him. Nine green suits, and as he needlessly raised his head to see, they were everywhere else. They flooded from the city behind him like a living shag carpet from the Seventies. The thickest flow spewed from the archway of the second building. The force field rose up, getting higher than it had previously been and everything got bright, and the automated ships began like a cuckoo-clock’s cogs, and he knew exactly why. He knew—everything.

  The flood of green suits surrounded the humans, which numbered in the thousands, by far overwhelming their count. The outside space became a seaweed ocean surrounding an uneven island of the undaunted: humans of every creed and color, all wearing different clothing as if they’d raided a hundred thrift stores from different nations. All were hairless—and they stood tall, not afraid. Looks of readiness, like soldiers—wearing leisure suits, incongruent tight pants and fruity mismatched shirts, and hats as if a rich old lady’s house had been pilfered. There were cowboy hats on dudes wearing spandex, women in nightgowns, teens sporting fast-food getups from every decade, and seniors wearing hip duds. All eyes were focused on Jerry, and while he knew just about everything, he didn’t know what had transpired out here, while he was, in there.

  “They’ve all been briefed,” one of the Boron creatures before him said. “Those who encountered problems with the contact lenses are using the older interface.” And Jerry saw the glasses making a considerable few of them, well, nerdy, and knew exactly what he meant. “You are the one now, Jerry. And you must go before it is too late. Jerry knew it as he said it, as if he had just explained it to himself. Like a dream it was, and these were his conscious DCs. He really was—the one!

  Jerry could see by employing their every eye, which was essentially every pore on every suit. And the Boron, no, the Jerry who had spoken, was just another extension of his mind.

  “They’re waiting,” another of the Jerrys said.

  “We must go, to stop your brother,” another said, “he is about to make a grave mistake.”

  “Some of us will remain here. To protect the ark.”

  “We have already explained everything to the humans. Some would like to go, some would like to stay here and learn.”

  One of his billion eyes looked at the sex bot that had fallen like a motorcycle, breaking its kickstand in the process.

  “We no longer need that contraption—” said one in the middle.

  “—as novel as it was,” said another. With the word novel came a laugh and a memory: Jon with him, sitting in a booth at Rita’s, when he received the spit beer blast after telling Jon about the insane shit he’d participated in at Meddlinn.

  “We must hurry,” the Jerry on his right said.

  “Take the ship,” said another.

  Jerry pulled on the new visions, drawing them back to one place, and he looked at the nine seaweed-green, tall-boys standing before him, and past them at the humans, and the green sea of others all possessing his massive, redneck shape. He could process information like a god. His human emotions—anxiety, happiness, complete and utter amazement—were still poking at him as if each had smoked a gallon of crack. But, he was alone in his mind, except for Bart. And Jerry quieted the noise, lowered the intensity of his emotions, so he could think. The focus brought clarity.

  It had all been planned, every detail: the very moment Joey merged with Boron, the white hole that was a throne, the transfer of power—one massive setup from one hidden part of the mind of Boron, from his highly evolved yet incomplete subconscious that had always known the result into which his efforts would eventually culminate. Boron was still in there, too, deep inside, and Jerry could interface with the knowledge contained therein as if he was Boron—as well Bart: the schism and his new adviser. Bart had been elected.

  The bartender was a separate part of Jerry but possessed his very own and still-developing ego. A check and balance, now, but still the same old bartender he’d always known, the one he’d talk to about all things at all hours while everyone was asleep in Midtown. Half of the conversations had gotten lost in drunken stupors and the chaotic choppiness that was once a broken and enslaved, and now as he realized it, an inchoate mind. Jerry received everything like a stack of unopened mail the size of a bus, packets neatly wrapped in rubber bands and he could spend years, weeks, minutes, or seconds opening them. The choice was his.

  As well Bart received an equal serving. Every minute detail, every word, the gripes, stuffed animal heads falling from the wall because of a Goliath fist through the wall, and the toasts, the good moments that seemed to stand out. They knew each other better than either of them had realized.

  It was all thanks to Jim.

  He’d returned using the old heli-jet. Jim had changed, too, and Jerry realized it as if the time he spent in the white hole was a suffocating dream, a paradoxical one that shouldn’t be handing over this present state. He felt his brother’s new power and that of his own. And Jerry knew well what he could do with it, but he knew his brother was at least a thousand-fold stronger in ways even his new capabilities to process information couldn’t grasp.

  Jim had put up a barrier Jerry couldn’t see beyond, a wall within his mind as he interfaced directly with Martin in order to make contact. The wall held back secrets, and a big truth. Replying to the curious inquiry, Jim simply said, “All in time.”

  The transmission with Jewel City had actually ended on a sour note: every one of the citizens of Extarion, as well every creature housed within the ark, had been wiped out. There was no way to decrypt Herald’s lending program and extract it from Martin. So, Jerry disconnected, accepted death rather than another hell, and headed out. After torturing himself with the memory of his best friends he declared to the humans, who didn’t have the look on their faces such as they do now, that it would be over quickly. Carmen, bald and smooth, and whiter than her usual tan self, wearing a spandex one-piece, stood by his side as he said, “Say your goodbyes, the sacrifices end now.” Soon after, the force field holding out the ocean snapped. Like a supernova extinguished by the matter of a black hole there was no noise, only a fizzle of light in turbid water before all went dark.

  But something else had also happened. Jim appeared before Jerry terminated the transmission. He’d somehow gotten back to Jewel City, extremely quickly, then logged in with Martin. He became Martin and for as long as he desired had the power of that system, as well, something else, something even Jerry, employing the white-hole blast of information and power Boron was tra
nsferring to him in the same moment, couldn’t fathom. Jerry didn’t exactly know how he’d done it, and a secret ran deep, but he knew his brother was not himself.

  Jim transferred to him the lending program and Jerry integrated it immediately. Kim, Lion, Crisp, Hugh, and Ivy, along with many dolphins, were now empowering, feeding, all. The system that became Jerry finished its configuration at the expense of more sacrifices. Carmen died. The Special was needed no longer, The Feed empowered Extarion. It topped off every buffer as well those in Kraw and the other massive ships, and it would be enough to travel to and from Jewel City several times.

  “Bart,” Jerry said, getting to his feet. “You’ll stay behind, get the ark ready in case we need to depart this planet. I’m leaving, solo—to save my brother, and the world.”

  110. The Photograph

  She pleaded with him. He did not give in.

  Jim knew he wasn’t the same; she deserved a good man she could grow old with. His love for her was the hardest thing to deny, as he did truly love her with every essence of his being: both the old, James as he’d become to her, and this new Jim. But James died as soon as he ate The Stuff, an iridescent gel-like goo that had come out from what seemed a basic milkshake machine in the special map Isaac and Maddy had created. A new Jim was born—and as much as it saddened him to leave Jess, this Jim must push on, and succeed.

  He took one day, and shut down his omnipotent capabilities during it. For just one, and the very last, he’d be plain old Jim. After his late morning interface with Martin, during which he securely transmitted the lending program to Jerry, as well some information—and the lie, a part of the plan that ripped at him—the rest of the day was bliss; he did what he had to and didn’t look back, for the fate of the world was at stake.