by Ramy Vance
“Water,” Martha said. “Throw some water on Bob. That’ll slow him down.”
“Thanks.” Rueben said goodbye and hung up. Then he threw open the door, and he and Aki and Jim dashed inside.
“Bro! Whattaya doing?” One of the papermen threw up his hands.
“Yeah, why you gotta be inviting trouble onto our doorstep?”
Aki scoffed as she turned and slammed the security bolt home on the closed door. “Trouble? You guys excel in trouble.”
The third paperman bit his fingernail. “Not when it’s trying to kill us, we don’t. You guys should leave—”
From outside, the robot Bob barreled into the iron burglar bars fixed to the glass door. Bouncing back a step, he tried to pull the door handle. It sheared right off in his powerful grip.
“I knew those bars were a good investment,” said the third paperman.
Bob gripped two of the vertical bars and wrenched the whole door from the frame. He raised it over his head like Tarzan and the glass inside cracked and sprinkled over his head and shoulders.
“Ah man, no one’s gonna believe us without our camera,” the second paperman whined.
“No one’s gonna believe us if we’re dead,” the third one said.
Rueben stepped in front of everyone so that he was closest to the robot. “No one’s going to die. Now we need a plan.” He scanned the building’s interior. The robot stood outside the doorway about five yards from him. Beyond the entrance, on the other side of the room were several desks and computers. Each had a bottle or glass next to them.
Behind Rueben was a waist-high wooden counter, and behind it, an extensive array of metal printing presses and relevant supplies. The papermen and Aki were right behind the counter, and Jim had wandered off to inspect the presses, childlike wonder in his eyes.
“If we can slow it down, we might be able to lure it over to the printing press.”
The three papermen glared at Rueben as if he was suggesting he torture a baby.
“You can’t do that!”
“You have no authority!”
“Free country!”
“You want to die then?” Aki said. When none of them said anything, she pierced Rueben with serious eyes. “I’ll start throwing water at it—”
The robot lumbered into the building, one of his massive shoulders knocking out part of what remained of the doorway. It didn’t say a word, only trudged toward Rueben and the counter behind him.
Aki wasted no time in hopping up onto the countertop and scooting over the side. She landed on the balls of her feet, crouch-rolled, and sprang toward the computer desks.
When the robot turned his head her way, Rueben picked up a silver paperweight of an alien head and hurled it at Bob’s back.
“Hey! That’s a collectible.”
Rueben disregarded the comment as he searched for his next projectile to buy Aki time. He hopped over the counter and found an empty plastic water pitcher. He thrust it at one of the papermen. “Fill this up.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. The kitchen. The bathroom—”
“You want me to put toilet water in this?”
“We don’t have a bathroom,” one of them said sadly.
Across the room from them, Aki reached the first computer. She lifted a bottle of green juice, tore off the lid, and chucked it at the robot.
“Hey! My green juice…”
The liquid spattered onto the robot’s chest as it started to stomp toward Aki. Tiny sparks hissed, but the lumberjack minion didn’t slow.
Rueben found a sharp pair of scissors behind the counter. He launched it like a throwing knife and it embedded in the robot’s back.
“My favorite scissors…”
Aki now picked up a glass mason jar half-filled with what looked like a milkshake. She threw it at the robot. The container broke, and milky soup ran down his front. Sparks started to shoot along its leg.
“Rueben, a little help?” Aki said as she reached for the third bottle, a plastic squeeze bottle that looked like it had plain water in it.
Rueben’s hands closed around a roll of packing tape and he threw it at the robot.
“Really?” Aki said, right before she released her final projectile.
Rueben shrugged, grinning when the robot’s other leg and one arm started to shoot sparks due to Aki’s liquid. It was moving slower now with only a desk between it and Aki.
With a jerky but surprisingly fast movement, the robot kicked out, sending the desk against Aki’s chest.
“Aki!” Rueben called as she lay on the floor under the broken desk. She didn’t move.
The robot turned and faced the counter, sparks dancing along its cheek and jaw as it gave a demented half-sneer. Then it started Rueben’s way like a slow, determined bull.
Rueben and the papermen backed away from the counter as the robot tore right through the wood. “Rrrr-rrr.” One of its eyes was wiggling loosely in its socket. Aki must have doused its face with that last bottle of water.
“The press prints tomorrow but it also prints today.”
“Not now, Jim,” Rueben said as he backstepped, trying to figure out how he could use the printing press as a weapon.
“Please don’t hurt my baby,” one of the papermen whined.
The paperman with the pitcher came out from a side room. The pitcher was half-filled with a yellowish liquid. “Dude, there’s no bathroom, but I had to go so I…”
The robot trudged forward and shoved the paperman back against the wall. His pitcher of yellow liquid splashed onto his shirt and floor.
“Dude, did you just piss yourself?”
“No.”
“Ah, so unsanitary.”
The robot halted, eyeing the liquid on the floor, evaluating how to proceed.
Rueben quickly inspected the metal struts and gears of the printing press. He saw plenty of knobs and time stamps of past and future dates. Suddenly the time stamp clicked and whirred as the date adjusted itself. The press hummed to life and started to print a paper. Odd… “How does this thing work?”
“We have no idea,” one of the papermen said.
“It just spits out papers with random dates on them. It’s like they come from other worlds. Parallel worlds. Crazy shit happens in some of them. The other day we got a paper from twenty years in the future. Front page story said the world was dying.”
Rueben’s gut clenched. Was this newspaper printing press somehow connected to the multiverse? And could they possibly use this press to communicate with the other worlds?
“Yeah. It’s so weird, bro. We copy and print the papers, and people buy them.”
The robot was finally starting to edge around the puddle. It must really not like liquid…
“Where’s your boss at?” Rueben said.
The man with the pitcher raised his hand from the floor. “That’d be me.”
“Just you three work here?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“We’re screwed, aren’t we? Oh no, the alien robot’s coming for us!”
Rueben didn’t even look the robot’s way as he reached up and messed with a plastic cartridge connected to the press. He managed to pry loose a small hose from the cartridge, and sludgy black ink dribbled down the press and his arm like blood.
Ink. That might work. He glanced over his shoulder at the robot, which was lumbering toward him, almost right on him. Now it raised both hands toward Rueben to finish him, its mouth open in a wide grin.
“Eat this.”
Rueben wrenched the tube away from the printing press, and ink squirted against the robot’s teeth and ran down its throat.
The robot’s hands closed around Rueben’s shirt collar. Then there was a small explosion, and part of the robot’s back peeled back as metal innards sprayed over the floor and wall. With a soft, “Rrrr-rrr,” the robot teetered sideways and crashed to the floor like a statue.
“Aki!” Rueben sidestepped the robot’s body and slipped through t
he hole in the counter. He dashed across the room. Aki still wasn’t moving, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing.
Grunting, he lifted the desk off her and carefully rolled her onto her back. Her head rolled lifelessly to the side with the motion, and he was preparing himself to give her CPR when her eyes opened groggily.
Rueben had never been happier to see those dark brown eyes of hers than right then. He bent down and kissed her, and she kissed him back.
“The robot?” she said after they both drew a breath.
“Inked.”
“Inked? Oh, is that what that black stuff is on your hand?”
Rueben nodded proudly.
“Then why do I smell urine?”
“It’s a long story.” He helped her up to her feet. Luckily she could stand and hadn’t been hurt too bad. Suddenly he had an idea. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Buzz’s number, but it went directly to voicemail. He called again. Voicemail. “That’s not good. We better head back to Buzz’s.”
“Why are we headed back? We haven’t gotten Rueben-Z’s blood sample yet.”
Rueben met her eyes. “Because I think Rueben-Z knows about the Bat Cave. I think he’s been watching us or listening to us this whole time, waiting for us all to—shit.”
“What?” Aki said.
Rueben recalled what Marshall had told him back at Buzz’s mansion. “Split the party.”
Yep, they no longer needed to find Rueben-Z. He had already found them. Buzz and Carolyn were all alone and defenseless and definitely not expecting him…
Chapter Eighteen
Thursday, May 25, 10:00 a.m.
With everyone except Carolyn finally out of his bunker for the day, Buzz could think for a moment.
It’s difficult being me. He poured himself a Scotch from the mini-bar. “Morning be damned,” he cursed as he downed it in one gulp.
Buzz knew too much. Saw too much.
Where the rest of the world saw an ordinary tree in the park, Buzz noticed the ecosystem within and on the tree and the intricacies of photosynthesis made possible by the sun.
However, life does not stop to allow one to contemplate trees, so by the time he finished taking in a tree, the world was screaming for his attention about things like bike route rules or the flying soccer ball headed straight his way.
Often, the sensory input was too much, so ordinary life exhausted him quicker than normal people. This was why he lived alone and numbed himself with massive amounts of alcohol and sexbots. Life was easier that way.
That, and because he could.
Now that everyone was all gone, Buzz could focus on one thing at a time and get something done in his lab. It wasn’t as well-equipped as the one back at his mansion, but it was still top of the line.
He’d already prepared the blood samples from Rueben and Carolyn and was waiting for his computer to spit out its analysis of them.
Back when Rueben had first come to him with his warping powers, Buzz had run every test he could think of so he could study it. Now he felt that Rueben-Z had some kind of virus in his blood that, once triggered, became airborne and ravaged all living organisms as the time disease. It was a long shot, but it was all they had to go on at the moment.
Since Rueben and Carolyn were also warpers, he’d compare their blood samples first until Rueben and Aki returned with Rueben-Z’s blood sample. Then hopefully he could figure out how to keep the time disease dormant or figure out how to make a vaccine or cure for it. Then they could worry about finding a way to warp back and undo all the worlds it had destroyed without the disease perpetually coming back.
That was the plan, at least. At the moment it seemed impossibly hard. At least one of the worlds was twenty years ahead. It would take some incredible genius brainpower to solve this problem.
The lab was an all-white room, set up with bright lights and stainless steel surfaces arrayed with touch-screen computer panels, dials, and switches. Suddenly, his printer whirred and started to print out the results of the two blood tests.
The pages contained a bunch of genetic jargon that he understood perfectly well from his time working as a consultant with the CDC. He still had access to its resources and databases and figured he’d probably need them shortly.
He prepared a slide of Carolyn’s blood and inserted it into his expensive microscope. He’d configured it so he could see the contents on his computer screen. Then he opened the CDC database on a second computer monitor and took a look at the blood sample.
Everything seemed normal—a bunch of red blood cells, as expected.
He then inserted a prepared slide into his electron microscope, and that’s when he made his discovery—pulsing spider-like viruses among the red blood cells. Although they had tendrils, they didn’t move. They appeared to be dormant, not interacting with the red blood cells, but they were no type of virus that Buzz had ever seen before. He leaned back in his chair.
He thought about what Carolyn had said about a virus or alien invasion killing her world. Was that what he was looking at? The virus that had killed her Earth and all the other Earths? The time virus?
He took another look at it. It sat there, almost as if it was staring back at him. Taunting him. He uploaded its image into the CDC’s database to check for any information on it. A warning flashed across the screen, based upon several viruses that most closely resembled its makeup: “Unknown pathogen, likely fatal.”
But from what he was seeing, the virus appeared to be dormant in Carolyn’s bloodstream. If it was inert in Carolyn’s blood, did that mean it was active in Rueben-Z’s blood? It was presumably inactive until whatever triggered it to become the airborne pathogen they’d dubbed the time disease. So many questions flooded Buzz’s mind. What was the trigger? Did the Repeating gene neutralize the virus? If another Buzz had determined that Rueben-Z was the destroyer of worlds, why did the virus remain dormant in Carolyn’s blood? It made sense that she had it since she traveled with Rueben-Z to all those worlds, but it didn’t make sense why it affected her differently. Hadn’t Carolyn said that hopping to new worlds reset the time disease? Why?
Buzz hurriedly tested Rueben’s blood sample and not surprisingly, found no trace of the time virus in his blood. He needed to do more testing…
A few hours later, frantic footsteps entered the lab and Buzz spun. “Carolyn? Do you think you have it?” His assignment for her had been to go through her memory to see if she could discern when Rueben-Z first started showing signs of the time disease so they could try to pinpoint Ground Zero for the disease. He’d given her a self-hypnosis voice recording to help her with the process.
She shook her head and thrust his smartphone at him. “It’s Martha.”
Buzz took the phone. She and Marshall were at the precinct, and one of his Bob robots was trying to kill them. He explained to her that Bob’s weakness was water.
After he’d hung up, Carolyn looked at him. “How did that robot know where Martha and Marshall were? Do you think it’s possible that Rueben-Z knows about this place?”
“Of course it’s possible,” Buzz said. “But we should be relatively—”
“—safe?” a sneering voice cut in.
Buzz and Carolyn turned to the lab’s entrance.
Rueben-Z stood shaking his head at them, wearing a trench coat over his metallic body armor. “Just because I can’t warp anymore, you really shouldn’t underestimate me.”
There was a swish of air, and Carolyn glanced down at her chest at the tranquilizer dart protruding from it. Rueben-Z eyed her, his fingers still together in a dart-throwing pose.
Carolyn started to waver then, and Buzz watched, stunned as she buckled and collapsed in a sprawl to the lab floor.
Rueben-Z chuckled. “No warping today, Mom.” He turned to Buzz. “Just you and me now, buddy.”
Buzz felt his face go pale. His mind worked frantically to find a way of surviving this encounter. “Hello, Rueben-Z. I mean, Rueben. Drink?”
“Rueben
-Z? That’s new.”
“We’re ahh, calling your home world Earth-Z. That makes you Rueben-Z.”
“Interesting. I’m surprised you didn’t use Greek letters as on the other worlds when I sought you out.”
“Funny you should say that. I was in favor of Greek terminology…but why don’t you tell me why you’ve come here? Seeking my help too? Sure thing. We can try to figure this thing out together.”
“Nope. I’m over trying to figure this thing out. I’m ready to die.”
Buzz stood there with a stainless steel table between him and Rueben-Z. “You…came here so I could kill you?”
“No. You misunderstand. I came here so I could go out with a bang. If I’m lucky, I might get to take out the whole lot of you One-Deathers before you get me.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Rueben-Z started to edge his way around the table. Buzz moved in the opposite direction. “No. But I want it to be.”
Buzz was sweating profusely. “You know, I don’t believe you’re redeemable. And probably, neither does your mother.”
Rueben-Z growled.
“Sure, she um doesn’t want us to kill you, but then again she did abandon you…uh. Shit. But uh…Rueben…he still believes in you.”
“Does he now? Hah. Figures.”
“We don’t want to hurt you. We think you’re the key to undoing the time disease.” Buzz backstepped slowly away from his aggressor.
“Time disease? That’s new too. But I’m not interested in being anyone’s lab rat.”
“Lab rat?” Buzz uneasily chuckled as he edged in front of a stainless steel lab refrigerator. “No. Nothing like that. We want to work with you. Together. No one has to die horribly.”
Rueben-Z snorted. “Ironic, coming from you. Considering how many times you horribly killed me on my world in the name of science.”
“One. That wasn’t me,” Buzz said. “Two, you warped back each time so did I really kill you? Three—”
Rueben-Z took another menacing step forward. “Enough chatting. Let’s see if you scream like you did in the other worlds.” He shrugged off his trench coat and raised his arm, the metal tube running beneath it gleaming in the lab’s fluorescent lighting. Fire didn’t shoot out of this tube—frosty ice did.
