Escape Velocity: The Anthology

by Unknown

  We nodded again.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  There were sweat rings beneath his armpits. His hair was damp. He smelled… scared. I wondered if he’d been sick. If someone was right now swabbing out a silver room with disinfectant.

  “They have to balance the books,” I said.

  “I…I mean…”

  “Someone’s got to pay,” Bell said. “For the crime.”

  “But she’s going to let two of us get away with it?”

  Bell smiled. “Looks that way,” he said, and I couldn’t help noticing that now he was even more relaxed than at any other time since we’d been arrested. It was almost like a script he’d written was being played out to perfection.

  The sentence was simple: whatever we feared losing the most was what we’d forfeit. Roach said that she’d told him this, and the way he spoke it was almost like it was news to him.

  “You knew that anyway,” Bell said. “That’s what it always is up here. Anything less and there’d be anarchy. If it was just about money then there’s people up here who’d get away with…well, anything they want.”

  “You told me we’d be safe,” Roach said, his voice quiet now, his shoulders slumped. In the silver walls I could see an almost infinite number of Roaches getting smaller and smaller and smaller. He looked like he’d be trapped in those walls forever.

  “And what do you fear losing the most?” I asked him.

  He looked across at me, but it was Bell that spoke.

  “For him it is money. Ain’t that right, kid?”

  “I’d have had enough,” Roach said. “I’ve skimped and I’ve saved and I’ve worked every hour of overtime they ever offered. I’d have had enough in eight or nine years.” He shook his head. “But that seemed like an eternity. That’s why I did it. If they take all my money…” A solitary tear spilled from his left eye and rolled down his cheek.

  “How about you?” Bell said. Then added, “ Don’t tell me: your memories. Your memories are the most important thing you have.”

  I nodded. The woman had been right. There’d be no way I’d ever get a big enough stake together to go down, so a polishing was all I could dream of. Red kites, green rivers, and silver fish. It had been worth the risk. One last shot at making them clear again. “And you?”

  He raised his hand. His one good hand. No words were necessary.

  “Who’s it to be?” Roach said.

  I saw Bell three months later. He’d told me to leave it that long just to be on the safe side. He was standing behind the counter in his bar, right arm pushed into his pocket, talking furtively to an older man who had pale skin, bright clothes, and a look of longing in his eyes.

  After his conversation had finished Bell motioned me through the bar and into a back room. The silver walls had been masked with black drapes.

  “I have money for you,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Let’s just say some of the shipment made it through. More than enough to cover her bribe. A little left over, too”

  It didn’t come as a surprise to me. I knew things had never been quite what they’d seemed and I instinctively knew there was an honour amongst this particular thief, too.

  He took his right arm from his pocket. There was a hand on the end of it now. That did come as a surprise to me.

  “It’s easy enough to do,” he said. “Off. On. Off again. On again. Given money, of course. Let’s face it, who would ever agree to a man’s only hand being severed?”

  It all finally fell into place. Roach had been the weakest of us, but he’d also been the best. He’d have never taken a man’s only hand or his only memories of being down; not even if it meant his own hell became real. I’m not sure I’d have been that honourable. But I understood now that’s why Bell had selected Roach as the third investor.

  “You knew we’d be caught.”

  “I had an idea,” he said. “Her name’s Helga. She just wants to get down, too. We have an agreement on certain things.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  He smiled, turned his back on me, and from a silver cabinet pulled out a thick envelope. He handed it to me. There was a lot of money in there.

  “Jeez,” I said.

  “People think real air’s going to cure all their problems,” he said. “It’s amazing how much they’ll pay to get it brought up.”

  I was still staring at all that money. “And Roach?” I said, looking up.

  “What about Roach?”

  “With this we could have paid his fine for him. There’s almost enough -”

  “There never was a fine, Herschel. Helga got her thirty thousand. We’ve got ours.”

  I felt stupid. I shook my head.

  “Roach paid his part of the bribe same as you and me,” Bell said.

  “But his punishment wasn’t a fine?”

  “Running real air up here? Think of the risks. There’s no bigger sin, Herschel.”

  I had a vague recollection that it had been Bell – not Roach – who had suggested that money was what Roach feared losing the most.

  “Where is he then?” I asked.

  He held his hands out in a who-knows gesture. I still couldn’t get used to seeing him with two hands.

  “It’s a big universe out there,” he said.

  I shook my head. It was too cruel. It was too –

  “Down,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You were thinking of a polishing. The amount you’ve made. The amount you could make. You might want to start thinking about going down, instead.”

  I went to say something but my heartbeat seemed to fill my throat. For a moment I had a very clear memory of silver fish. Crystal clear.

  “That fellow you saw out there,” Bell said. “He’s in his forties and hasn’t been down for over twenty years. His memories – and his finances - are shot to pieces but he’s prepared to get a stake together for a deal I’ve put to him. I was wondering…”

  Bell looked me right in the eyes and smiled knowingly. “Do you want in?” he said.

  Free Market

  Gavin J. Carr

  “Honey Jacks are sugar sweet, the tasty treat that’s good to eat! Kids and grown-ups love them so, the wholesome snack that’s good to go...”

  An idiot cacophony. Over and over, the crowd chanted the words as though it were a litany, an affirmation of their deepest beliefs.

  “Honey Jacks are sugar sweet, the tasty treat that’s good to eat...”

  As he looked at their faces, he was overcome by vertigo. Yarrow Harkins — 22nd century historian and explorer — felt sick. Here he was at the apex of his career, the first historian to travel in time, to ancient Egypt no less, and yet something was very wrong.

  “Honey Jacks are sugar sweet, the tasty treat that’s good to eat...”

  Two Weeks Previously

  Conference room three. The UTC building. Forty floors of smoked glass and chrome penetrating the smog like a Satanist cathedral.

  There were twenty people around the conference table; Yarrow was the only one not wearing a suit.

  “How long?” shouted Braun, his face scarlet with indignation, his jowls flapping in the cool conditioned air.

  “Three months,” said White. He looked bored and unimpressed by Braun’s outburst.

  “We were under no obligation to tell you we were doing it,” he said. “To be frank, Mr Braun, I didn’t want to inform the government at all.”

  “You didn’t want to inform the government?”

  “No, if it weren’t for my lawyers then I wouldn’t have. However, it seems that under the Trade Monopolies Act I have to inform you eventually. As a courtesy, you understand. The government has no authority to stop the project.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. To remind the government’s head of trade and industry that he had no power and no authority. The United Trade Conglomerate ruled the world, generated the power, grew the food, and purified the water. The govern
ment was a squatter on UTC territory — living rent-free and at their whim.

  Braun shook a ham-hock fist. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this! You mean to say that you’ve built a time machine — a goddamn time machine — and you weren’t going to inform us? Three months you’ve had this thing. Didn’t you think this could have consequences? I won’t allow it!”

  White looked down at his feet, at the Italian shoes that he knew would have cost Braun a month’s wages. He was smirking. It made him look like a naughty schoolboy waiting to be reprimanded by the teacher. “Actually it’s gone a bit further than that,” he said. “We’re past the prototype phase and we’ve already carried out a number of missions.”

  Braun sat down hard. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. He looked frightened and stunned, deflated.

  Another man stood up and cleared his throat, “If I might say a few words. Yarrow Harkins, Mombasa University. Mr Braun asked me along as an observer. I’m head of the History Department.”

  Heads nodded in acknowledgement.

  “I’m no physicist,” said Harkins, “but isn’t there a risk of creating a paradox? Isn’t going back changing the future?”

  A bald-headed man rose shakily to his feet. He unfolded a pair of spectacles and balanced them on his nose. “Doctor Milson, UTC Research and Development,” he said. “I’ve been on the project since the start and I assure you no risk of paradox. We take precautions. The civilizations we encounter are carefully vetted. We only approach those who are already cosmopolitan, and used to trade with other peoples. The goods we exchange are sufficiently advanced that there’s no risk of their reproducing them. Luxury goods, items which will generate the profits our shareholders demand and yet won’t alter the rate of the civilization’s evolution. We even ensure that the goods are biodegradable. No trace will ever remain.”

  Now it was Harkin’s turn to be stunned. He could feel his jaw hanging open. “You’re trading with them?” he said, “You’re trading with people from the past? Are you insane?”

  There was a week of court hearings and arraignments. Of arguments and counter-arguments.

  In the end, the court decided in favor of UTC’s time travel program, but with a concession to the government lawyers — an observer would be present.

  Harkins, a historian, had been appointed as the observer.

  As he stood there now, squinting against the grit of the desert, he watched the crew unload crates of goods.

  There were thousands gathered around the ships, their hands outstretched, their eyes glinting with need. The sight reminded him of refugees in Britain after the ice caps melted. They looked desperate, elbowing one another out of the way, as the crew distributed chocolate bars and iPods, hand-held video games and tee shirts.

  When white settlers had arrived on the shores of the New World, they had brought plague with them. The natives had never encountered it before, and had no defense against the disease.

  Well, UTC had brought their own particular brand of plague to these distant shores, Harkins thought.

  Consumerism.

  The crowd took up the chant again. A thousand Egyptians, their linen loincloths replaced by Bermuda shorts and polyester trousers, their hardened feet in loafers and space age sneakers.

  “Honey Jacks are sugar sweet, the tasty treat that’s good to eat...”

  Someone opened a box and tossed them into the crowd. They cheered and fought one another for the privilege of paying for them.

  In the distance, Harkins could make out the shape of a half-built pyramid. Somehow, he doubted it would ever be completed.

  Jutzi Coblentz, Amish Time-Traveler

  Joshua Blanc

  Jutzi had been Amish since the day he was born, and lived the simple life that was expected of him. That is, until the fateful day he was kicked in the head by his father’s horse while mucking-out the barn. Since then he’d looked at things differently. You probably would too, if you’d had the Amish kicked out of you by a stroppy nag.

  Since then, he’d found his daily chores on the farm very tiresome. For instance, he was always cursing the plow for the way it went about the task, i.e., not very well. Moreover, a man with two hands could only milk so many cows. Surely, there was a better way?

  Therefore, he had become an inventor. He didn’t exactly know it, for the term hardly belonged in the Amish vocabulary. There was no place in Amish life for the very nature of inventing, let alone inventing to the extent that he took it. Mending a broken cart was one thing, but modifying it so that the horse ran behind was another.

  Ordinarily his family and peers would frown upon such things, but because all his inventions were so frightfully useless they’d found there was no harm in humoring him. So long as he got his share of proper work done, he was allowed to spend his spare time in an old workshop in the barn.

  His eccentricity was made light of by such turns of phrase as, “There’s Jutzi Coblentz, the man with a case of the Contraptions,” or “Yep, that’s Jutzi, working on another of his Doomajiggers.” Jutzi, bless him, didn’t have the brains to know what pride was, therefore no one could dent it.

  Other little foibles had presented themselves after his accident. Speaking in sums was one; which puzzled him greatly, for he could hardly add two and two without a basket of eggs at hand. He had also developed the unsettling urge to wear a moustache with his beard. This presented two obstacles. One, it was highly frowned upon in Amish society, and two, he had never actually seen one. However, being the visionary he was, he didn’t let either problem stand in the way.

  He surmised that a moustache must be beard-like in nature, thus he made one out of horsehair. After gathering it with utmost caution, lest he be kicked a second time, he glued it to a piece of matchbox with extra-thick molasses, then trimmed it accordingly and fitted it with string. He donned it every time he entered his workshop, and all his best inventioning was done with it sitting rather bushily under his nose. It did tend to tickle, however, and he developed the habit of scratching his hooter long after hanging the moustache on its special peg by the door.

  Tonight he’d been listening to his mother tell stories of his long-departed great grandparents, and how they too had plowed fields, made cheese, reaped grain, and done everything exactly as the Amish still did it today. Had they really? he’d thought. Had no subsequent improvements been made down the generations? It seemed a bit odd that he and his fellows should still be using such primitive methods if there were better ones waiting to be discovered.

  One plus three over the square of the hypotenuse.

  He scratched his nose. How I would love to visit my great-grandparents and see how they’d really done it, he thought. To see their fields, their cowsheds, and their ornery blasted plows. Maybe I could even suggest some improvements, and we’d be decades ahead by now! Yes, that’s it! I’ll invent a time wajoobi!

  Just how Jutzi had fathomed the concept of time-travel without ever leaving his isolated community we shall never know. Suffice to say that he had, and with no right-minded person present to tell him he was crazy to even consider building a time machine out of a bucket, some aged cheddar, a pocket-watch, and a pitchfork, he went ahead and did it. No one was more surprised than he was when it worked.

  “Six times five...,” he said, gawking at the unhinged scene around him. This equated roughly to: “Well, bother me...”

  It wasn’t fields, or cows, or barley blowing in the wind he saw before him. There were hard-packed surfaces, and gigantic buildings made out of no kind of brick he had ever seen. To his right, horseless carriages rushed past; frankly scaring him rigid.

  This can’t be the past, he thought. He lifted his foot out of the melted sharp cheddar in the bucket. Should have used mild, he thought.

  He took his most prized possessions from his coat pocket: a battered stub of pencil and writing pad, and wrote mild. He paused for a moment and added, or perhaps milk. He returned them to his pocket and leaned his time thingamy against a nearby po
le. There was a light at the top of it, burning steadily unlike any flame. The place was swarming with lights of many colors. He too leaned against the pole and let things sink in. A few people wandered past. They gave him cursory glances but seemed unfazed to see a man from the past standing there. He saw a man with a nicely trimmed beard, and his hand went to his own.

  Thank goodness for the moustache, he thought. I knew there was a reason!

  He relaxed a little, and took a few casual steps along what was obviously a path. It was jolly hard stuff, and there were no uneven paving stones to trip on, or mud to step in. He took out his notepad again, and wrote, find out about that. He left the nature of ‘that’ uncertain; confident he’d know what he meant when he read it back later.

  “Ciiiiigarettes,” he heard. “Wiiiiinston ciiiiigarettes.”

  Over by the nearest building was a man in an overcoat, holding a tray before him filled with little boxes. Jutzi approached in wonder.

  “Hey, buddy,” said the man. “How many boxes d’ya want?”

  “Three and a half, minus the sum of the opposite sides,” said Jutzi, when what he really meant was none.

  “Come again?” said the man.

  “Please, what are ciiiiiigarettes?”

  “Cigarettes? They’re for smoking.”

  “Ah, tobacco?”

  “That’s right, here have a free sample.”

  The man held up a little paper tube. Jutzi took it between thumb and forefinger and took a sniff. There was no mistaking the smell; it was stuffed with shredded tobacco.

  “And they’re packaged in boxes?”

  “That’s right, twenty to a pack.”

  “Twenty... twenty...” Jutzi began counting on his fingers. “You don’t have any eggs handy, do you?”

  “Eggs? Say, you’re not from around here, are you?” said the man.