The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

  Can I even die?

  Claudio dared to turn his face to the sky, where dusk gathered and the moon rose high and silvery and full. The hood of his cloak slid away from his face, moonlight falling cold and casting an eerie glow on his sharp cheekbones and the bridge of his long nose.

  Has something blessed me? Is this my job now, to scrub the earth of lesser creatures, all the while living on and on?

  It struck him, then, why and what he must do. A holy man such as himself needed a holy weapon, one not forged on this side of the divide between worlds. It was his right, and he ought to take it.

  But what if he tested this theory first? What if to prove himself worthy of this holy weapon, he performed the perfect task, the perfect act of revenge? To reach where he would need to go for that would require another trip, and Ambrose’s tech wasn’t nearby. Perhaps he would have to access Vere’s lab after all.

  He walked to the porch, squared his shoulders, and reached for the bell.

  Monday, January 20, 2053, Reynard College, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

  “You made it.” Davis beamed at Violet and shook her hand. “The speaker’s about to begin. Come on in.”

  The room was full of young men, all white, many blond. Violet scanned the room, feeling sick and uncomfortable. Her cheeks burned.

  I don’t want to be these people’s poster girl.

  She glanced behind her, where Wilbur lingered in the doorway. Occasionally students regarded him with suspicion, while others gave him congenial nods. Ben was nowhere to be seen. Violet tried to catch Wilbur’s eye, willing him to look at her, to somehow answer her silent question.

  Where’s Ben?

  As if finally hearing her, Wilbur looked back into the hallway, scanning it up and down, before turning back to Violet and giving her a shrug, his eyes sad. He shook his head.

  Violet allowed herself to be led to a seat in the second row.

  We’ll never get him if we’re not together, all of us.

  She looked down to the end of the row and was relieved when Wilbur sat down.

  They exchanged a look. Violet understood it was all up to them now. Whether Ben arrived or not, they would somehow maneuver Claudio out by themselves. This Claudio, this young man, wherever he was, didn’t know them. He could be persuaded.

  “Thank you, thank you.”

  Applause thundered throughout the room. Violet turned her attention to the stage, and there beneath a shaky spotlight stood a scrawny young man with an unmistakable figure and face. The white spot gleamed on the angular planes of his face, throwing the hollows of his cheeks into stark shadow.

  He looks like Death.

  And it was true, his white face above a suit of black clothes hanging loosely from his slender body, young Claudio Florence looked a skeleton, a Grim Reaper. All he needed was a scythe in one bony hand to complete the image.

  Wednesday, September 2, 2043, Rivierdorpe, Missouri, USA

  This wasn’t quite right.

  Claudio thought he’d aimed for the old apartment, the strips of flypaper hanging in the windows, the sounds of unruly kids yelling at each other outside. But this was a shopping center, some parts enclosed mall-style and some parts storefronts open to a pothole-pitted parking lot. Half-lit signs buzzed above glass double-doors with wheezing pneumatic hinges. Shoes, coffee, electronic cigarettes, payday loans and check cashing. Torn red, white, and blue bunting from the vacated headquarters of a failed mayoral candidate.

  A dingy car rattled into the lot, the front passenger door robin’s egg blue but the rest of the vehicle a sickly pea green. An actual gas-and-electric hybrid that rumbled along the ground, even, not a hovercar or a stamper.

  I know that car.

  Claudio ducked behind a post in front of a five- and ten-dollar store and watched as a scrawny woman, barely out of her teens, dragged a child from the back seat.

  “Charlie, come on.”

  An indistinct whine.

  “Fine, stay there.” The mother slammed the door and stalked up toward the front of the payday lender. Claudio kept his back to the post and slid around, staying out of sight but keeping a view of her.

  Flickers of memories. Claudio stifled each one and instead stared at the mother as she tugged at the shop door. She cursed at finding it locked and pulled a short pipe from her jeans pocket.

  “That shit’ll kill ya.” The man seemed to come from nowhere. His skin was pale, paler even than Claudio’s own, and his head was shaved so close the skin almost glowed. A tattoo of a copperhead snake wound from one ear to the other.

  The mother stepped back. “Stay away from me. I have a restraining order.”

  “I got parental rights.”

  “You do not!” She tucked the pipe between the index and middle fingers of her right hand and jabbed at the air between them. “You are a fucking psycho and a rapist, and you—”

  The man interrupted her with a string of curses so vile even Claudio found himself shocked. He’d said—he’d thought—similar things about this woman, about all women, really, but to hear someone else scream them at her still surprised him.

  I came here to kill her. Get out of my fucking way, snake-man.

  Even then, Claudio knew. This wasn’t some ex-boyfriend of hers, wasn’t a fling gone wrong or even just someone stalking her.

  This was Claudio Florence’s father.

  He could do it right now, could kill not just his good-for-nothing mother, while his still-small self fussed not twenty feet away. But he could also kill him, who’d apparently…what, exactly?

  “It was rape, you cocksucker!” Claudio’s mother screamed. “You see this?” Suddenly she tugged at something on her face, which she then held out to the man. “This is what you did. This and that psycho fucking kid of yours. He sets fires to the carpet. He scares me.” She was still holding the thing out, and Claudio couldn’t quite see it, but the man recoiled.

  “What the hell?” The fight was all out of the snake-man. He cringed and backed up.

  Claudio’s mother closed her fist around the object. Her whole body shook. “You left me with a cracked cheekbone, a broken eye socket, and everything under there was all bleeding and meat and liquid.”

  Claudio clamped his hand over his mouth.

  “This one ain’t real no more.” She shoved her hand against her face again. “You just took and took and took from me.”

  Kill them both.

  Claudio looked across the lot at the car. He could almost make out a tiny dark head, likely bowed over a coloring book. He looked back to his parents, but now his mother was stalking off into the alley between two storefronts.

  The man watched her go, hairy-knuckled fists balled tight at his sides.

  Give me a reason, old man. Just one reason. I don’t need you alive to become what I am now, this god, this indestructible force of change. I am perfection, and it’s my job to destroy the imperfect in this world.

  The man strode off to a waiting hovercar. Its sides were painted with flames and a tiny bumper sticker reading “YOU’RE ALWAYS FREE IN YOUR OWN DAMN MIND.”

  Claudio stared at the words as the car ascended and flew off. A dim memory told him the kid in the road car was staring at the bumper sticker, too.

  He rapped on the window, and the child rolled it down.

  “She isn’t going to come back,” Claudio told himself. “Not until she’s slept off a bender and you’ve been two weeks in foster care with a woman who’ll stick pins in you. Call the police, otherwise you’ll get far too warm in here. Might as well wait as little time as possible.”

  “Who’re you?” Charlie asked.

  Claudio shrugged. “A self-made man, I suppose.” He stared off into the direction his father took off. “Runs in the family.”

  He readied his knife before pressing the spot on his palm that returned him to the Jonson basement laboratory. Vere was tied to the chair as Claudio had left him.

  “Maybe I’m not brave enough to kill some people,” Claudio snarl
ed, his head pounding, “but others leave me no trouble at all.”

  Vere squared his shoulders. “I am a soldier, Mister Florence, and I demand that you let me die on my feet.”

  Claudio canted his head from side to side. “Mm, that’s a very brave request, Doctor,” he said. He turned and slashed across Vere’s throat. “But I’m going to have to say no.”

  Monday, January 20, 2053, Reynard College, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

  Davis leaned over to Violet. “I heard really amazing things about this kid, after I left you earlier,” he said. “He’s gonna be big.”

  “He’s gonna be something all right.” Violet glanced at Wilbur. He was the only person in the row not applauding.

  Gradually, others stopped applauding, too, gasps sprang up in different corners of the room. Violet turned to the center aisle, along which someone walked, loudly, in decisive, measured steps.

  Ben stopped when he reached the front row. He alone applauded, but in exaggerated, slow claps.

  “Brav-o!” he called up to Claudio.

  Claudio put his hand along his brow line to shield his eyes from the spotlight. “Can I help you?” he asked. He nodded up to a spot above the lighting rig. “Hey, Jer, can you—” Claudio slid his hand along his throat, and the spotlight turned off. “Thanks.” He hopped off the stage. “Usually I don’t get a ‘bravo’ until I’ve actually said my piece.” He looked up and down at Ben and laughed. “But, uh, something tells me you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

  A smattering of nervous laughter from the audience.

  “You know, whenever someone not of the pure race comes to hear me speak, to heckle me, they’re committing the political sin of forgetting,” Claudio said.

  Ben blinked at him. “Excuse me? Forgetting? Have you forgotten the Holocaust? Slavery? Genocide in almost every nation in the world?”

  “Slavery, see, that’s a good example,” Claudio said. “The Civil War wasn’t a single-issue conflict. The Confederacy was interested in more than just preserving their noble way of life. They were concerned with the implications of a federally controlled government.”

  “That’s a subject for debate among historians and social scientists,” Ben said. “Not this little Nazi propaganda rally you got going on here.”

  Violet tensed in her seat and balled her hands into fists. If things got ugly, she knew some moves that would at least temporarily incapacitate Claudio, though how the audience would react to that was another matter. Maybe instead it would be better to get Ben out of there and hope Wilbur could blend in and sneak off on his own.

  She gauged the numbers. Twenty on one side of the room, perhaps another three dozen on the other. All young and fit. She did more scanning of the room and realized there were only two other women in attendance.

  These aren’t good odds.

  “I thought I remembered this.”

  Another voice, eerily similar to that of the young man standing in front of Ben. Violet couldn’t get a good view, so she rose and squinted down the center aisle.

  The same face and body, only now decades older. From inside his jacket pocket, the Claudio Florence whom Violet recognized from the newsfeeds withdrew something smooth, something gun-like and yet not.

  Oh, my God. That’s the weapon.

  Why hadn’t she brought a gun? She owned one, a little snub-nosed Taser- and laser-job the bureau issued her. She thought of it, in her dresser drawer at home, useless. Hell, they were in the past, weren’t they? The damn thing probably hadn’t even been built yet. Maybe hadn’t even been invented yet.

  “Mister Jonson, I don’t know that we’ve technically had the pleasure, not officially, at least.” Claudio stepped forward, the weapon still trained on Ben. “Ben, I’d like you to meet me.” He patted his chest before gesturing across the aisle. “And me.”

  “Um, what?” Younger Claudio peered at his future self. “Are you—you look like my—”

  “I’m not your father,” Claudio snapped.

  Ben wore a smile tinged with madness. “Shouldn’t you be erasing each other by now?” he asked. “This—I’m sorry, I know I should be scared here or something, but this is all very split-screen-in-an-old-movie kind of cool.”

  “Ben,” Violet couldn’t help herself. As soon as she’d blurted out his name, she clamped her hands over her mouth.

  “Veronica?” Davis’s face fell. “You know this Pak—”

  Violet didn’t let Davis utter the full word before slapping him across the face. “You shut your racist mouth, you piece of shit. You hear me?” She scanned the crowd. “All of you. I don’t even care anymore. You found me out. Do whatever you want, but at least let me die saying this—you’re all evil.” She looked at young Claudio. “And you’re the worst of them. Getting them stirred up like this, starting this whole crap.”

  “You mean I’m not the worst of them?” the elder Claudio asked. “I’m hurt, miss.”

  “That’s Miss Dare to you.” Violet felt her adrenaline pump as Claudio’s brow furrowed. “That’s right. I am Virginia Dare, and your own little lackey rescued me because of the fucked up way you were going to use me for this.” She spread her arms wide, indicating the room. “I am not going to be the mascot of what you’re building here, not now or ever.”

  Claudio raised the weapon higher, aiming it over Ben’s head and toward Violet. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Violet could almost imagine a gleam of tears in his eyes.

  Almost.

  “I’m afraid,” he went on, “that I’ll have to erase you.” His confused scowl melted into a grin. “Much the way I erased Doctor Vere to procure this device.”

  Ben flew at Claudio without hesitation, knocking the weapon away from aiming at Violet. She fell to the ground and covered her head, intent on crawling to the fight and knocking Claudio off-balance, but the sound of screams made her shudder and stop.

  Students rushed to the back of the room in a stampede, nearly trampling Violet under sneakers and sandals. Davis was no longer beside her. She struggled to her feet, searching for Ben—oh, thank God, there!—and Wilbur. She heard a strange sound, not quite a gunshot, not quite an explosion. The smell of ozone filled the air.

  Wilbur?

  Where Wilbur Wright stood a second earlier was nothing but a scorch mark marring the plaster of the wall.

  “No.”

  Ben leaped; the gun fired again—this time into the ceiling—and then gunshots rattled off, their irregularity familiar to Violet from her academy training. Someone who doesn’t shoot very often, or at all.

  The younger Claudio stood with a tiny pistol in his hand, the barrel smoking. He looked startled and scared, and for the first time Violet could see that given another direction in life, a kinder direction, he might have been handsome in a fragile sort of way. His hair fell over his forehead, making him seem less a college student and more a lost little boy.

  “I don’t know what I…” The young man’s voice trailed off, and Violet followed his gaze.

  The older Claudio was on the floor, clutching his abdomen. Blood seeped from between his fingers. Ben stood nearby but made no move to help him.

  “I’m not your father,” the older man gasped. “And I’m not supposed to die. I can’t die.” He laughed, but the laughter became a cough. Blood spattered across the hardwood planks. “Wanna see how much I can’t die?” He raised his own weapon and fired it at his younger self.

  Both men vanished.

  Friday, September 3, 2100, Avon, Vermont, USA

  “I think he’s coming to. Do check out that woman, though, would you, Kris?” There was a murmur and a pause. “Ben? You all right, lad?”

  The face staring down at Ben as he opened his eyes was fuzzy and backlit. The voice was wrong, but still he murmured Vere’s name.

  “What’s that, then?” The face leaned in closer to his own. Ben’s eyes focused on the features, the long, almost bulbous nose, and the sandy hair streaked with a few lines of gray along the temples
. The voice was heavily accented but not with Vere’s Mid-Atlantic rounded consonants and long vowels. Instead it was mushy and fast, a thick Cockney.

  “Am…brose?”

  Ambrose nodded. “You’re all right, boy-o, ain’t ya?”

  No. Not even a little bit, not if what Claudio said was true.

  “He killed Eddy, didn’t he? Claudio, I mean.” Ben tried to sit up, but his head pounded.

  “Oof, watch it, there. Haven’t given you the antidote yet.”

  Before Ben could protest or question, Ambrose stuck a long needle into Ben’s arm and pushed down on the plunger. Whatever the syringe was filled with was thick and sent fire racing through Ben’s veins. He shouted and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “The antidote, you dolt,” Ambrose said. He pulled the needle from Ben’s arm and shoved a wad of cotton onto the injection site. “Blimey, did we not retrieve you fast enough this time? You’ve already forgotten? Prevents the clots, it does, so you don’t risk a bloody aneurism every trip, right? Only been givin’ you this shite for five years now, ever since we started the agency.”

  Ben’s head cleared, and he finally struggled up to sitting. “Wait, wait, wait, we started the agency?”

  “Course we did, lad. Us three.” He canted his head to one side, where Kris stood holding a tray of instruments, both medical and electrical.

  It was then Ben took the room in at last—really took it in—and saw that what Vere managed to rig up as a serviceable if Mary Shelley-esque cellar laboratory was transformed into something sleek and gleaming, an O.R. and a computing workroom combined. The walls were white, and flat-paneled screens decorated them every few feet. Some showed Ben’s own vital signs, which he recognized due to their movements growing more fevered as he felt his heart speed up. Some showed a moving diagram of the time travel accelerator, and still others showed newscasters, muted, their words scrolling at the bottom of the screen in closed captioning.