The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  “What have we done?” Samyreux, the magnificent blue one said—with his teeny-tiny mouth this time.

  Q no longer possessed a quirky, smart-ass attitude. It was as if he’d just taken a spanking, and not the good kind his two wives frequently gave him.

  116. Two Pages of a Book

  Herald took a seat, for his legs could prop up his near weightless, brittle frame no longer, and the portal closed behind him. Ana saw a note taped to the panel on the other side of the room and shuffled her way over to it.

  “Careful, Ana,” Herald said.

  She made it, then read the note out loud; her voice crackled as if she’d aged another decade. “Push play, it says.” She took in a deep breath of clean air to clear out the last traces of Club Subterranean’s ladies-room stench, and catching her breath, pushed with all she had in order to read the next line: “Dudes.” Her thin, shaking finger pushed the button, and her delicate self almost fell onto the panel.

  “It’s me, your quirky friend,” Q’s voice said over the speakers. “I understand now. Noit pulled Rochowan to the side and they had a talk which spanned days—seconds on your current tier—then everyone came to me like a family and I felt their concern, and love, and the change Amy had instilled within them, the change that soon enveloped everything. Rochowan explained things, as did each of the remaining anomalies. I experienced a small taste of what they’d been holding in, what they’d sheltered us from. Now I understand how that, at first it was a great thing, yet it had become, well…

  “Love is what matters, the only thing. There, I said it. I know I’m a crazy little shitblast—that’s just how I roll—but for once I shut my hole and listened as their tears fell. They truly cared and I felt their honesty. A much-needed intervention. I grappled with the focus of every mind pushing it into me, a force of overwhelming goodwill, and truth. The other anomalies injected the package deep into my goofy brain and I saw the light. Thank you, Herald, Ana.

  “I realize what is truly important, that it’s not about achieving god status, wanting more, more, always more—although I had always wanted to lead my own fleet—in the real world, you know. So, we’re headed back. Many still have working ships stashed in the other planes and they’ve vowed to help. I told them we’d be as powerful as superheroes with all we know, with the combined might of our fleet. We can assist and rescue those on Earth, and retrieve every consciousness that has been stolen.

  “I left this note because I didn’t want to disrupt your experience—I saw you were using the last of it… Anyway, by the time you read this we’ll be near Earth. We took all of the space-jets except for one—as I know you told me you wanted to, as you put it, retire.

  “Blippy pop! So, take care, dudes. And Herald, my heart doesn’t radiate with warmth like the other cheesesticks, but, I want to convey my gratitude. Thank you for everything, and goodbye. I know now, as the others explained it to me by lowering their walls, that we can never meet again—paradox crap, anomaly-shamaly. You are my family, though, and I’ll miss you. I’m not the type to get all gushy mushy, but, I love you and Ana, and Amy as if she was my own daughter. Peace out.”

  The recording ended. Herald, pushing on his knees to keep his old body upright in the seat, looked to Ana. She wobbled side to side as if dizzy and worked her way across the room toward Herald. He used every last bit of his strength to stand, and a white stick and a tan stick caught each other; they eventually made it back to the soft chairs lining an eighth section of the lab’s circumference.

  Under the glass-dome ceiling, a window to pitch black, mostly empty space save for the reflective rings that seemed an infinite racetrack, and in his arms, Ana looked into his gray eyes. Without saying a word, Herald knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “But I cannot foresee a way, Ana.”

  As slow as a fasting granny, Ana brought her arm up and made one caressing pass across Herald’s cheek. The skin was cracking, dry, and seemed as if it would just crumble from his face and fall into his lap. She said, “Te amo, mi amor. Puedes hacer cualquier cosa—si crees. Believe…”

  “Ana…” He shook his head. “…we would need to pilot the ship, while lending, and get to Earth—” He cut himself off and looked up, through the glass, into the deep void of nearly empty space. “—wait…not Earth… Right! We could—”

  Herald’s eyes lit up like a dead gray toad’s, one just impaled with the end of a rainbow. Ana smiled. She knew Herald. He’d always uncover a way, even if it was buried in ninth-dimensional matter—even with a thousand-year-old brain.

  They both knew Amy could be in trouble now. Not that they could have stopped her—she had to live her own life, do what she wanted to do. But she promised she would go in, make an attempt, then speed away, that she wouldn’t stay longer than absolutely necessary. And if from near Mars she saw things had already gone to hell then she’d just turn around. Herald knew it was all for an absolution, so she could close the book and move forward, for she, like the printed Jim, and the real one who was with her, would surely see the impossibility.

  But now with Q, a fucking wrench about to jostle the beehive, she and her husband would not be able to escape. Amy would get there first, and because of the time differences, and what was possible on the higher-level planes, Q and his super-duper bunch of misfits were about to ruin it; he’d get there just after Amy and Jim.

  Herald had expected, before, that printed-Jim would do what he knew he was going to do—and that would be that. Jim would build an army, charge, and die. And when it finally happened, he, along with Jerry and the others, would be free. Herald knew too well that the machine world had evolved far greater than any machine world to date; it was a paramount evolution of the other side: the supreme failsafe. In the scope of the entire universe, it was the one place where none wanted to be, and he knew the machine mind, like an underground tumor, which likely had grown to the size of a small moon, would always be ten steps ahead of anything Jim and any others could think up. They would get salvation all right, in the form of death: final, absolute, merciful. The hell would end, and life which had become nothing but pain, would expire into nothingness. At the time, his misanthropy still thriving, Herald thought this was best—and had handed just that, to Jim with his choice.

  But now Amy was in trouble. He let her in on everything and she had agreed not to stir up the machine world, not to mess with any of it in any way. He knew she could likely pull off the least of what she had planned, with the blocker, with what else he’d given her, and the help of Martin—but with Q and dozens of unblocked ships…

  “We can go back, now. And I surmise the other anomalies will have undergone the same finalization we’d just undergone, each couple in their own way—it is the way of things, the planes trying to make ease with the paradoxes, the anomalies, as well the countless others. The paradoxes have been cleansed—Ana, we can go.”

  “But we can’t do it like this,” Ana said. “We can hardly move.” Her stare pierced his heart just as it had done in Tijuana, when they were young and lying at the edge of the cliff, holding each other and stopping time for the first time.

  “You're exactly right,” he said, caressing her mark. She smiled so wide the birthmark, old and dry, cracked and seeped bright-red blood. Herald put his finger to her face, touching her blood. He moved it between his fingers and smiled enough to injure himself. “We’re two pages of a book, Ana, predestined to fold into ourselves. I love you more with each second. You are my universe.”

  He injected her, she him. The adrenaline cocktail was lead to stone, but with their resolve and renewed passion, it was enough. It was enough to get them to the port—barely. They had to get away from Frisson where time was close to that of Earth, and fast. Hobbling like zombies to a ship full of brains, they wobbled up the ramp of the last remaining space-jet, the one Q had left them for retirement.

  The space port opened and the ship, piloted by two ancient beings one level above ash, shot out. They flew around the moon, lea
ving a teal trail of glitter that pronounced we’re not ready to die, and toward the massive planet: the cold world with its equator slashed to ribbons. The slingshot from the gray world broke hip bones and the red-giant star penetrated two sets of eyes that were nearly blind anyway. They smiled, and basking in the red glow of the solar-system-sized fireball, held each other’s hand.

  The wormhole opened. A space-jet on the far end of the universe where the laws of physics were as weak and old as two seniors unready to croak, willing, determined, and at least barely able, punched it like a young boxer’s fist to a speed bag.

  117. The Cookie Jar of Space, Time, and Existence

  Jim had only said he was departing on a suicide mission, that the machine city was going to explode: so stay away! It was the little white lie delivered to the man in the white hole, for he was actually heading to machine central to stab it with himself, a virus intended on flipping the polarity. The attempt to merge with its systems would shut ’er down, then reboot for good, not bad. And after, he would live, possibly, but not as human or anything resembling one.

  He knew it would be enough to lure Jerry, and because of the insinuation about blowing it up, Jerry would try to stop him—alone. He knew Jerry well enough, even though he’d last seen him in human form as a young teen—before Jerry ran off to LA with his nymphomaniac girlfriend, Alice. But it was what Jim took from their recent communication, an albeit weird transfer of information, while purposing Marlo as a conduit: he grasped the scope of what Jerry had become—and Jim’s facile mind constructed the potent addition to his plan immediately. They’d both be going in. Jerry would chase him inside and a merger with the singularity would receive a double serving: Jim would quickly absorb the new powers of Jerry and everything he’d become, and unfortunately Jerry might perish, but the machine mind would not stand a chance.

  The world—Jess, my love, he thought—would live on. He pictured Jess with another man, having children, and being truly happy—and maybe she would think of him from time to time. It was the thought, flickering like a 16-mm dream in his mind, that maintained the smile on his face throughout the journey. Constant orgasm, and goosebumps vibrated rainbows into existence.

  Then he thought again of Jerry. Jim didn’t want to sacrifice the big man—if he didn’t have to. It all depended on cooperation, but he would if it came down to it. Maybe they would both die in the process, maybe they’d both transcend, possibly, but Jim was certain he could exploit Jerry to crystallize the chance of victory: meaning, in one way or another there would be no machine mind once he’d had his way. Two brothers, both altered in magnificent ways, both wanting the same thing, whilst consciously aware of it or not, moreover the exact particulars, would meld into something even more magnificent and perform the takeover—not destroy it as Jim’s tiny white lie had asserted.

  But Jerry had not come alone, dammit! Jim made the angry face because Jerry had decided to take a human along on this proposed, highly likely suicide mission. The two goons saw his angry face from across the way, yet the act, though, had Jim busting up inside; within a second, he pulled hard on the yoke, sending the heli-jet into a twist and roll. Jim shot up and away from the singularity; now, he wasn’t only pleased Jerry had brought the human, but realized Jerry had just saved the world, possibly the entire galaxy, possibly even, a nearby universe.

  Unlike Jerry and himself—part machine, dependent on that which human’s possessed: a licensed consciousness—Andy was able to be read. Jim took in Andy’s thoughts as their eyes met: some were ghastly, e.g. Jerry’s last-minute plan; others were enlightening. Cheating, Jim received the machine-world’s intentions. He knew immediately, his plan was a part of a grander plan. He also knew, Jerry really was, in there.

  “Follow me, brother, quick,” Jim said to himself, knowing Jerry would. Jim gripped the yoke with his muscular arms, turning and pulling. The spiral loop pressed him into the hardened-leather seat and the heli-jet gave all it had, then Jim gave it something, again: the helping hand.

  NOTHING!

  “No!” And NOTHING was water washing it down! Through the recent connection with Andy, Jim finished swallowing the lump of understanding like a basketball-sized gob of peanut butter: the true and daunting power of the machine world—and it had him like a black-hole’s event horizon.

  “Can it really be?” His thoughts exploded. Something had been luring him this way and that for years, manipulating the grand scheme of events like a child dipping into the cookie jar of space, time, and all existence. An unseen—and if so, unheeded—force had been playing him for the fool, messing with his mind, twisting things with infinitesimal nudges here and there. The reason Jewel City hadn’t been consumed. His eyes were so wide the whites bullied his wobbling, growing pupils and shrinking ocean-blue irises; Jim was petrified.

  Herald was right.

  Jim thought he knew something minutes ago, but now, looking in the rear-view mirror at the enraged one who had so patiently waited, the one who was done waiting, he knew he hadn’t known jack shit. Nor had Maddy or Issac, the super post-alpha, hyper-evolved Millennials; their supposed master plan was a compressed turd sinking into an ocean-sized toilet bowl.

  Jim stopped. He released the yoke. Trying to get away was futile. It was done, there was no escaping this. Even the seemingly omnipotent chrome glob Herald and Ana had borrowed would be a single red blood cell against cancer-cell drone ships numbering not only the trillions, but more, and just as omnipotent each, with every type of zapper, or black hole sucker for a mouth, as well a new, weird energy that Jim couldn’t put a finger on. These weren’t the ones that had attacked Jewel City, these were Area-51 speculations on roids, ones that were really real, with really scary shit!

  The energy pulled on his puny craft like the hand of Zeus reaching up from the Pacific to snag a tired butterfly. Jim lost his smile, and let the glowing happy-yellow aura die; the goosebumps stopped playing their hippie tune and his head sank into the hardened-leather headrest as if it had become soft again. Facing up and being pulled in, backward, Jim was ready for the end. “I’m so sorry, Jess. I love you with all of my printed heart. Rico, crazy bud whom with I’d venture into another stinky freezer and beyond any day, those in Old Town, and Felix and his mezcal—thanks for the hat—and Rafael who’d become wise and more human than any human, and Ted with his calm avuncular nature, and Jon, the best friend he could’ve had, perhaps in another life. Fast Lia and Strong Abell and goofy Myron. Alex, even though they didn’t talk much, and fun-loving Trixie. His brother, Jerry, and this new person he’d just met through a mental channel, Andy. Even Amanda, who had chosen to stay because of him—he felt terrible about that, now; Amanda and he would’ve gotten back together, if it wasn’t for Jess, but he wouldn’t take back a thing. Yes, Amanda was going to be extinguished, all were, as if they’d never even existed. And loud Bertha with a train horn for a kisser, now even she made a knee-weakening dent in his heart, and glum, dejected Rob Price who surely wouldn’t see Kim again, and the thriving families of Maggie and Blanca; the clockwork bots working below, put in high spirits because of Rafael’s arrival…

  Yes, all will die, now. This was not some sort of science-fiction novel where the ending could be cleverly fixed to plunge the reader into vicarious awe, this shit was real, and it was fucking happening. Was it totally his fault, though? It didn’t matter. “I am sorry,” Jim said.

  The machine-world’s machinations ran deeper than even he could fathom with his new and fully unlocked sphere-slash-gray-noodle concoction. True, his gray noodles were wriggling about that damn thing like worms in a mucus pie, and the sphere was a heart pulsing and pumping, and teetering the bounds of possibility and other dimensions, but it wasn’t enough. The machine-world’s mind had been playing the system itself, on multidimensional planes, changing minuscule details, bending the universe until what it really wanted eventually fell right into their hands.

  Before he closed his eyes, like some kind of road-raging idiots, Jerry and
Andy pulled up beside him. Jerry looked like he was driving a taxi through a black hail storm and Andy was waving his arms. The red light on the heli-jet’s panel flashed. “Fuck it,” Jim said. He pushed the button, breaking radio silence.

  “Jim!” It was Jerry’s voice, something he hadn’t heard, as it was just then and there, in more than twenty years. The white-hole transmission had distorted it in a weird way, but this one had twang.

  “Jerry, it’s too late,” Jim replied.

  “Fuck that, bro, I’m opening the back. Plow that motherfuckin’ bitch inside. And I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Jim smiled, then shook his head—then nodded. Andy unlocked his belt and headed to the rear. Jim maneuvered, engaging his helping hand with a re-bolstered sense of determination. Yellow aura returning, betraying the machine-world’s potency, even a sprinkle of rainbow hippie, he swung the heli-jet behind the massive craft.

  The rotors exploded like a wooden church taking a semi and the heli-jet skipped into the much larger aft bay located between the wide, immense set of four thrusters. Crash! It hit the metal bulkhead to Andy’s right, and Jim, unlike the antique craft, survived the wreck jolted but unscathed. Behind the force-field partition Andy hung on for his life. “He’s in!” Andy said. Kraw relayed the call and Jerry slammed the red button in his mind. The rear bay door closed.

  118. Collision Course

  There wasn’t time for a reunion; they had one anyway.