The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  The bad memories hit him next, and with it, Ana’s pain. Herald became enraged, and he knew what she’d sacrificed nearly every week in order to keep her foster mom and the others who lived with her, safe. Next, she showed him the moment she found out Lorenzo had been lying—he had also been abusing the other, younger girls, and boys too. It was the last straw.

  Ana lowered her wall, completely.

  He took it all in. Hands around Ana’s throat, the stench of tequila and hot smoker’s breath being blown into her face, and he saw the slob thrust himself into her. Herald felt the abuse as if he was the young, 24-year-old, beautiful woman. Lorenzo spanking her and pushing her down, pulling her hair as he took Ana from behind. Herald could smell the sweet smell of the religious seven-day candle burning on Ana’s dresser, the scent of her nurse uniform hanging next to the bed, and saw pure evil in the eye of a slob smiling and grunting on top of her. Herald lost his knees and Ana did her best to catch him. He managed, barely, and she stared into his eyes.

  “You didn’t know why, Herald,” she said, “why such a beautiful girl loved you, why I came to you?”

  Herald’s white skin became pink. Though it wasn’t much he gave his old knees strength and returned the stare, into this old woman’s eyes. He didn’t even know her in that moment. He forgot who he was looking at. And she pushed out more of the abuse: what she really had to do, the worst memories, ones buried like pitch-dark, rotten sludge. Herald began to sweat, he wobbled and heard a hissing sound, then a grunt and felt something on his shoulder. He saw red and the sweat came from his skin as if he was being boiled—and inside he was frozen. His heart had not the power to fight the coming cold and his eyes went wide. A brown grid closed in on him and his breath was being hijacked from his lungs. The nasty purple carpet became a water bed with an angry ocean inside, and his head went round on the pinpoint that was his neck.

  “Herald,” Ana said softly. The pivotal moment exposed everything to her, too. “You were never the anomaly. We were, the both of us, but only for as long as we are together. And, you do know me. Nothing has changed. Now wait for it—our first touch.”

  Herald looked around. He felt drunk on disgust, and nauseous. A new pain wanted to manufacture some vomit and add itself to the disaster of a wobbling carpet below his feet. But her words, still soft and caring, as if he was listening to the 24-year-old Ana, still had a power over him. Then, as if an hour had passed, he saw his younger self, standing, alone on one of his once favorite tiers. His younger self was wobbling, too, and his blue drink sloshed out and onto his pants and the table. As white as a ghost, young Herald was about to go down. Then young Ana came to his side and said, “Hola.” Young Herald blinked and pulled out of it…they sat down and talked. Flash! She put her hand on his knee. Flash! Ana touched his forehead. Flash! Herald touched Ana for the very first time, gently moving her hair to the side. Both old and young took in her beauty.

  And old Ana breathed in the totality of Herald’s memories, now. Herald’s wall was vulnerable like never before. She saw his insanity as colored, living noodles with the occasional snake slithering around. And she saw his mother, when Herald was merely eight years old. Ana felt it all as if she was Herald: being put into the closet for days while his mother would wake and scream like a drill sergeant for hours on end. Her insanity was a gasoline bomb, one after another after another sending hot flashes into his young mind, and she unleashed it all week, every week, unloading every ounce of her own disgust for life, existence itself—having a son she hated. Her hate for herself, all of it, was driven into Herald. Burns from the iron, starvation, no sunlight, the demented and extremely creative methods of both mental and physical torture—went on for years. Herald had respite only when his dad came home; he made it home most weekends. But after his dad died the real torment began. Another tear fell from old Ana’s cheek, and Herald cried as he continued to see, feel, and experience for himself, Ana’s deepest, darkest secrets, her unbearable pain.

  No. Nothing had changed between them. Herald quickly won against his demons this time, for he had the one person beside him who made him complete. Two old farts standing in a hallway, that wasn’t so packed because the dance floor was, finished exchanging their personal hells. Ana possessed the other white-lightning tree, like Herald, she always had. But something was happening. Like the hand of God, extirpating the tree from her mind and his—right there in the tunnel with gum and vomit on the walls—it pulled, raising the sparkling, blinding madness deeply rooted in their subconsciousness; the two trees merged at the top and became connected. Flash!

  Old Ana wobbled back, Herald too. He fell, but before hitting his head on the rock wall, by chance, a very tall man grabbed him.

  “Are you okay, sir? Was headin’ to the head. Good thing, you almost knocked ’er good.” He was the first youngster to come by who hadn’t spat an insult about the two of them being out-of-place geezers.

  “Thank you…Je—” Herald cut himself off. “Thank you, kind sir. I surely would have had you not come along.”

  “Can I help you to get to a booth?”

  “That would be nice of you. Please.” Young Jerry, like a walking cell tower, took as much time as needed—and it was a lot: he escorted old Ana and old Herald to a booth, a booth in the cave right above the booth in which their younger counterparts were currently falling in love. After they sat Jerry made a curious look, then shook it off, then politely excused himself. Both Herald and Ana thanked him. Not long after that the waiter, Julian, politely asked old Herald and old Ana if they would like a drink. Herald ordered a Blue Hawaiian, Ana agreed to try the same. And Herald shook Julian's hand, slowly and for a while. Julian made the same curious look Jerry had made, then bowed his head and politely backed away to get the drinks.

  “What happened?” Herald asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think whatever had been a part of us, is now gone.”

  “We were meant—we—”

  “Soul mates,” Ana said. “How about we just leave it at that?” Herald smiled, then nodded. They hugged like frail skeletons. And henceforth they could no longer read each other’s minds, but they knew everything. Then a look bounced between their old, gray eyes, devoid of color for the extreme age had sucked it away; the stare said they would never take knowing anything for granted again, there’s enough unknowns left out there to fill a thousand more lifetimes, long ones like the remarkable life they’d shared. They enjoyed their drinks, slowly, and watched their younger selves for the rest of the night.

  A slow but happy conversation was a turtle crawling between two old and out-of-place geezers. The technotronic lights lent their wrinkled mess that had to pass for skin some color, and they smiled and felt free. Two molested, damaged, and abused people had found each other once again, and realized it did not have to end, that they could go home without fear of causing another paradox. They’d continue to find each other over and over and there would always be more to learn.

  Below, young Herald and young Ana gazed into each other’s eyes. Love was born, and young Ana felt the signal. It told her she’d found him. Young Herald’s signal was disrupted by his insanity, but he received it nevertheless. He found her and it would no longer be just about himself. He’d save her, she’d save him—and then they kissed.

  Upstairs, an elderly couple, holding hands, micro-stepping and assisting each other with each one carefully, made their way back to the bathroom.

  112. Rednecks in Space

  Andy wasn’t having it. He kissed Janette, hugged her tight, then told her goodbye. And he told Jerry he was going—whether Jerry liked it or not. And Jerry, his green face morphing like he’d just bonged a beer, nodded. They took the ship and blasted through the ocean’s surface. The water was white like it had taken Ceres, chasing them for a mile into the sky, and Andy gripped his armrests like a man strapped onto a nuke. Jerry was green steel, piloting the football-field-sized ship with his hollow muscular arms, on manual. Within minutes they were in space
.

  The ship’s buffer was topped off with the feed, rather than The Special, and although it was supposed to be the same extra-dimensional subconscious stuff, somehow the feed was significantly more effective. Every system operated at maximum, and faking the signal became a child toying with a calculator—Kraw was fully cloaked, surrounded by space debris and active drones; some nibbled on junk, little laser cutters flashing, and others seemed to be repairing and building: old satellites, as well something far worse. But the two had other more important matters on which to focus their attention. Strapped into their locked swivel chairs within the circular, dimly lit bridge area, orange-jumpsuit hologram mode off, Jerry and Andy were a mismatched team. It wasn’t long until they were over the heart of Moribundia looking down. They waited.

  “Moribundia, bah. Land of shit,” Jerry said.

  “I agree with ya there, old bud.”

  Two dudes from Tennessee, Jerry from Maryville, Andy from nearby Sevierville, commanded the seaweed-green ship; Andy let his arms float in zero gravity and helped Jerry watch for it. They remained tilted forward so they could scan the Land of Shit, a gray, filthy world with streams of purple and green gas. Like hurricanes that’d been turned into millions of city-sized creeping snakes by an epic meteor storm, the streams floated high and low across the surface. Gnarled structures twisted high into the stratosphere like burnt witches’ fingers, continually pumping drones into space and around their way-too-big-for-just-two-dudes ship: Kraw.

  Andy knew the plan, as well Jerry’s next move. He saw everything through the glasses he’d been given before the grab-bag clothes rush (he managed to trade his teal old-lady trousers and spandex top for a flannel and a pair of worn jeans before takeoff). For some reason the contact lenses didn’t work with him, as well many others, but the black, thick-framed glasses were just as effective. Through them Jerry could communicate with Andy using his mind: messages would appear as floating text and readouts, graphs, and myriad virtual items of significance. And overwhelmed-Andy could manipulate and interact with all of it by making hand gestures, as well position any of the virtual items to any fixed or unfixed place within the virtual world on the other side of his spectacles. It was old tech, but handy.

  Apparently, Boron had been a hoarder, but more so, as they’d come to learn—Jerry through the white hole, and the others through the old tech given to their naked selves before thrift-grab mania—it was all part of the plan. For this reason, Boron saved Jerry, the only one he managed to rescue from Moribundia’s massive cold storage of scans. Boron’s subconscious knew all along, and recognized Jerry for who he was; he knew perspicaciously, courtesy of mighty processing power and a decent chunk of time, that he’d eventually have to merge with a human, and he’d picked one. So, Boron became a redneck from Maryville, Tennessee, one with a heart like that of an underdog boxer with nothing to lose, one that’d been through hell.

  Consciously, Boron disliked humans. He was trying to save all other species, but unconsciously and undeniably, the goal was always to save humans. Subconsciously, Boron fully realized the power of the human mind, and needed it—yet there was one thing he could never decipher. So, the solution had always been, one, merge, two, become more powerful than anything (using anything as the boundless word it is), and three, head to Moribundia, now the Land of Shit, and hack it to hell. Like a rogue virus he would convert its every system.

  He would turn the tide.

  What was bad, aimed at destruction, what arrived to every other civilization that failed miserably in this very same way, would be a force for good—and the world would be repaired. Drones would be fixers not reapers, and one entity would reign supreme, would reign over the humans anew—Boron. He would be God. God, supreme ruler of planet Earth. God, with a new and flourishing, and unstoppable domain. It would be the most magnificent creation in all of the universe, the reverse of the current singularity to which the Land of Shit was plummeting. The polarity would flip for the arrow: the bullseye would switch from a black target to a white one. White-hole proliferation and expansion, not black-hole suck and fuck and smash into oblivion.

  But Boron could only speculate for as deep as he could see, then and as he once was. And because he could never fully decipher the power of the human mind, surmising only that he would after the merger, his plan went awry. Now, and since melding with the chosen one, he perceived everything differently, as well received a back seat.

  And there was another implementing Boron’s, now Jerry’s, plan in much the same way, and this other plan was currently in progress. Jim had told him little, but it was enough. There was one big difference, though, as far as Jim’s plan went: he was to be a virus that would wipe the Land of Shit, destroy its every system. The result would be a world of ash. Jerry, and now Andy, knew this was the wrong way.

  Especially Jerry had gotten a massive upload of information. Andy was trailing but saw the light. They knew exactly what the gas was doing, now, and the Land of Shit and its systems had other safeguards operating continually to keep the Earth from being turned into a frozen ball of ice, or a superheated planet like Venus—at least until it was ready. Purple and green gas—and there were others, less visible—each with its own purpose, kept the blue and gray planet from going completely gray, then straight to hell. And Jim, who was more than capable of making his plan happen with his new power, was about to destroy all of it. Earth would become an oven in a short time, killing all, in turn triggering the unfinished but still hyper-deadly it.

  Jerry retained Boron’s plan, mostly, yet he didn’t want to be the ruler of the planet, nor a God, and surely not in the way Boron had envisioned things. And his big win gave him the choice. His unstoppable willpower, with enough heart to impale a black hole, thanks to Boron’s sick way of extracting The Special, provided him the strength to overcome any force. He’d traversed fields of hot blood-soaked mud while being slashed to a skeleton, he’d been raped, beaten down, chopped, and smashed—turned into leather. His recent merger was a pinball game within two minds, the odds tilted in his favor, and Jerry, rather than the weaker, untried, inchoate, conscious mind of Boron, had won. It was his, all of it: the four massive ships, the special place under the ocean, and the world—if he could stop his brother. And if he couldn’t all would be lost.

  Jerry, along with his bud, sat staring at it, waiting for Jim to appear. Jerry employed his skin of eyes and senses, as well the more telescopic ones of the ship. He scanned, and waited. Employing his nerdy black frames, Andy assisted; he used them in conjunction with the screens on the wide, wrapping panels of the bridge. The two of them waited for as long as it would take inside the bridge and Jerry maintained Kraw's position above the Land of Shit. An hour passed, then two.

  “Sure could use a beer,” Jerry said.

  “How would ya drink it?” Andy laughed. “Maybe pour it on your head.”

  “Would probably work, you know. This suit, whatever the fuck I’ve become, is quite sensitive. I’ll have to tell you about it one day.”

  “Seems we have time,” Andy replied, “how ’bout now—”

  Jerry pointed. “See that. That’s the last tick of our clock.” A swirl appeared. By chance it happened to be where Tennessee had once been, near the fabulous city named Nashville—now a dome the size of ten Nashvilles, surrounded by countless witches’ fingers reaching into the sky: the heart of the machine world. “You see it on your readout, Andy?”

  “Sure do, zooming in now.” There was a distortion about twenty miles down, and a black void seemed to be appearing.

  “You should’ve remained with the others.”

  “Wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Andy replied. “We’ve been through hell together, how much worse could it be?”

  “Well then, you better buckle in tight because you're about to find out. Once we break silence they’ll see us—it’s gonna get hairy.”

  113. Take Off Your Pants

  Jerry knew well what was about to happen, but he had no oth
er choice. Andy gripped his armrests like a tweaker as Jerry activated Kraw’s thrusters. The big green one fell like a tank that’d been fired from a white hole; within five seconds the teal afterburners faded into a fireball.

  “Just hang in there, Andy,” Jerry said through Andy’s glasses. But they’d fallen off when his head went into the headrest like a fist punching it; the glasses hit the back wall and glass went flying. Jerry glanced over, himself safe from the G-forces. Andy was as if behind a jet engine, his skin like that of a basset hound. “Hang in there, buddy,” Jerry yelled, “just a little bit longer.” The once cool interior became heated and Andy was a piece of scared-shitless white toast heading into a toaster.

  Jerry leveled out and soon enough trailed Jim, who was clearly on a course for the center of the dome, a dome which appeared to be opening. Drones encircled the Manhattan-sized lotus maw like a black hurricane. The hole Jim had slipped out of vanished in a clap, and Jim was a flea heading straight toward gravestone-gray triangular jaws. Jerry zoomed in by controlling several aspects of Kraw with his mental interface while simultaneously looking at Andy with a few of his millions of eyes. Andy was passed out, head dangling toward the right, mouth open. “Told ya, Andy. You wouldn’t listen.” But Jerry was somewhat glad he’d come, he enjoyed the company, even though it might signify Andy’s death. Although, if they didn’t succeed it would signify far worse.