Timecaster: Supersymmetry

by Konrath, J. A.

  No matter. Sata had a back-up plan. Talon and his wife would suffer, billions would die, and then Sata would grab a bite to eat.

  Or maybe eating now was smarter.

  Speaking of eating, Sata smiled, thinking about the obnoxious dissy, who was probably in the middle of dinner right now…

  • • •

  The dissy, whose name wasn’t important because he only had ninety seconds left to live, woke up in the middle of a forest.

  He stretched, rubbing the bump on his head while taking in his surroundings. It didn’t look like Milwaukee. While the utopeon section of Milwaukee was full of foliage, it was also full of buildings and streets and people. This forest was just a forest, with nothing manmade as far as his eyes could see.

  He tried to remember how he got there, came up blank, and picked up the carton of chocolate ice cream that was on the ground next to him. He was spooning a large scoop into his mouth when he noticed the dinosaur staring from the bushes.

  The dinosaur nodded and said, “Hello.”

  It was about six feet tall. A biped, with a head like an alligator. It wore what appeared to be aluminum foil pants, and had very long arms that looked out of place on a dinosaur, though the dissy had to admit he’d never seen a dinosaur before so he couldn’t really judge body/arm ratio with any degree of accuracy.

  “Hello,” the dissy answered back. “You want some ice cream?”

  He offered the dino the carton. The lizard took it, and gave it a sniff.

  “Chocolate?” the dino asked.

  The dissy nodded. The dino passed it back. “I don’t really like that flavor.”

  “What is your favorite flavor?” the dissy asked.

  “Cardiovascular.”

  “Cardio-what?”

  “You know. Heart. Veins. That type of thing.”

  “Oh.” The dissy scratched his beard and pulled a rat toe out of the scraggly hairs. “Well, sucks to be me, doesn’t it?”

  “Seems like you made a lot of bad choices.”

  “Can’t argue with that.”

  The dinosaur leapt onto the diss

  y, its foot talons digging into the man’s abdomen. Its large mouth opened and locked onto the dissy’s chest, tearing out an impressive chunk of ribcage. The next bite ripped out his still-beating heart.

  “Oh, yeah.” The dino said, chewing the tough muscle like a big, bloody wad of gum. “That’s the stuff.”

  ed to ?” Harry askedet>

  Chapter 2

  When I first became a cop, I figured I’d chase down murderers and rapists and assorted scumbags and make the city of Chicago a better place to live.

  I never imagined someone would invent a device that could record the past, making my job obsolete.

  I certainly didn’t imagine someone would then try to use that device to try to erase humanity from the planet, kidnap my wife Vicki, and then drag her through a wormhole into a parallel world.

  But then I’m not really an imaginative guy.

  I scratched the stubble on my chin and thought about the complicated series of events that lead me to this moment, beginning with…

  No, screw that. I had no desire to do any sort of mental recap.

  All that mattered was that I just left my earth by stepping through a wormhole created by a specialized tachyon emission visualizer, and I was now on another earth in a parallel universe.

  This earth looked a lot like my earth. Seconds ago, I was in the abandoned remains of the Milwaukee Brewing Company. Now, I was still in the Milwaukee Brewing Company, but it was no longer abandoned. This one was brightly lit, sparkling clean, and bustling with people in full white uniforms, moving this way and that way with obvious purpose. I inhaled an exotic scent coming from a gigantic copper kettle, and realized they were actually making real beer.

  I’d never had real beer. On my earth, in my universe, the United States of America and Canada was eco-friendly and green. All vegetation was used for either food or biofuel, and recreational uses were illegal. Our beer was synthetic, and tasted like ass sweat filtered through gym socks. If people wanted to get buzzed, they took drugs, or alcohol pills.

  While trying beer would have normally been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I wasn’t here on vacation. An alternate version of me had fled here with my wife, and I was determined to get her back.

  I looked around the busy brewery for any sign of Alter-Talon and Vicki. All I saw were white uniformed figures hauling equipment, lugging thick hoses, squeegeeing the floor, and performing other mundane tasks. I ran to the nearest worker and grabbed his shoulder.

  It didn’t feel like a shoulder at all, and my palm made a clanging sound.

  The man spun to look at me, but he wasn’t a man. He had cameras for eyes, and a mesh speaker where a mouth would be.

  A robot. Cool.

  We had robots on my earth, but they weren’t this advanced. Twenty years ago, the government passed a law limiting robot ownership and prohibiting advancement in robotic technology. This came after the infamous VacuuMassacre; a faulty shipment of CarpetBuddy automatic floor vacuums were programmed incorrectly and mistook organic tissue for dirt. Thousands of people were minced and sucked up. Tens of thousands lost limbs. The number of pets killed in the tragedy was incalculable. It didn’t do much for CarpetBuddy stock, either. applause.

  &Bci anymoreI pu

  “I’m looking for a man and a woman who just ran through here,” I said to the bot.

  I watched the cameras in his eyes zoom in and focus on me.

  “Green,” it said. And it didn’t sound robotic at all. If anything, its accent was Midwestern.

  “My wife, and a guy who looked like me. Did you see where they went?”

  “Green,” it said again.

  Getting nowhere, I turned away. Obviously, the technology on this earth hadn’t advanced to the point where robots could think. I began to walk off but the bot lashed out and caught my arm, squeezing tight.

  It hurt like crazy.

  “WTF!”

  The robot pulled me, without difficulty, across the damp floor of the brewery. I tried to beat him in his head and kick him in the side, which did nothing but make clang! sounds and hurt my hand and foot. I looked frantically around for a human supervisor, someone who could shut this tin man off.

  Then I saw where he was taking me.

  The gigantic copper brewing kettle, with a ladder spiraling up around its circumference. A conveyor belt overhead was dumping things into the boiling liquid.

  Human-shaped things.

  I began to thrash and yell, my eyes locking onto a gigantic aluminum lauter tun, used as a holding tank and filtering vessel for the beer. Painted on the side was Soylent Green Pale Ale.

  People. They’re making beer out of people.

  “Got another one for the fire,” the robot said, leading me to three other robots. They each grabbed one of my limbs and we began the slow ascent up the brew kettle. It was throwing off heat like a furnace, and sweat broke out all over my body, but that could have been the result of fear rather than temperature.

  I stared overhead and watched another naked corpse fall off the conveyor belt, into the boiling brew. A few tiny droplets of wort splashed out of the top of the kettle, landing on my face, causing tiny little burns. One hit my lip, and I shot my tongue out to cool the burning sensation.

  Tasted pretty good.

  I continued to struggle and yell, to no obvious effect, and they eventually carried me all the way up. I threw my TEV—the one that would allow me to save Boise—off to the side and onto a crate of machine parts, hoping it didn’t break. Then I screamed for help.

  Incredibly, there was a real flesh-and-blood human being standing on the top platform, fiddling with the touch screen of his digital tablet.

  The bots held me over the boiling liquid, which churned and bubbled like a witch’s cauldron, complete with floating body parts and malevolent-looking steam.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, budd too much
woman for that.”

  “you opportunitety!”

  The guy looked up and blinked, as if surprised to see me there.

  “Stop,” he commanded.

  The bots all froze, suspending me immobile above the kettle.

  Stop? All I needed to do was say stop?

  “You’re not dead,” my savior said.

  “Thanks for noticing.”

  “The brewing process only calls for dead people. We don’t typically use live adjuncts. Unless there was a change in the recipe.” He checked his digital tablet.

  “There’s been a mistake. I’m not an adjunct.”

  He padded over to me, using his DT to scan the chip embedded in my wrist. The chip served as permanent identification. It also functioned as a key for electric locks and was directly hooked up to my credit account, so a swipe of my arm opened my doors and paid for my purchases.

  The scan didn’t work, thanks to the obfuscation disk I’d placed over the chip. But the brewmaster noticed the sticker and peeled it off with a grubby fingernail, flicking it over his shoulder. He scanned again.

  “Talon Ace Avalon,” he said. “You’re a Chicago Peace Officer. A timecaster. Your profile doesn’t mention you’re supposed to be brewed.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “But it does say you’re the most wanted man in the USAC. It says you destroyed Boise, Idaho, killing half a million people.”

  I shook my head, some sweat rolling down my face and into the kettle. It was pretty damn hot up there.

  “They aren’t dead,” I told him. “They were transported to a parallel universe and are on an alternate earth ruled by dinosaurs. Also, it wasn’t me. That’s Alter-Talon. He’s a perfect genetic match, and has the same chip ID. He’s also psychotic and his hands are falling off.”

  The brewmaster stared at his DT and shook his head. “I don’t see that on here.”

  “You have to let me go,” I pleaded. “Alter-Talon has my wife.”

  “Your alter-wife?”

  “My real wife. He’s working with my old boss to destroy earth.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “The alter-earth? Or this earth?”

  “To you, it’s an alter-earth. To me, this is the alter-earth.”

  “Kind of confusing, isn’t it?”

  “I know it all sounds like a crazy science fiction novel…”

  “You ever read Minority Report? P the antidote for the nanopoison to get opportunitethilip K. Dick?”

  “I missed that one.”

  “I always thought the timecaster program was always kind of a rip-off of that. You know, preventing crime by seeing into the future.”

  “Timecasters don’t see into the future. They see into the past.”

  “Still, lots of similarities. And this whole alternate universe thing you’re talking about, that sounds suspiciously like Harry Turtledove.”

  I couldn’t believe we were talking about books at a moment like this. “Look, you have to believe me.”

  He tapped his chin. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay, I believe you. Set him down.”

  The bots set me down. I rubbed my wrists, working to get the circulation back.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me. I should thank you. There’s a ten million credit reward for your arrest. Immobilize him.”

  The nearest bot reared back and kicked me square in the groin. I doubled over.

  “You said you believed me,” I groaned.

  “I do. But I’m morally ambiguous. I’d rather be rich than do the right thing. Taze him.”

  All four of the bots zapped me with their built-in tasers, and that was the last thing I remembered before blacking out.

  Chapter 3

  I heard a voice in the darkness, reading me my rights.

  When I opened my eyes I saw I was in leg irons and handcuffs, kneeling on the lawn outside the brewery, with an EPF collar around my neck. Six peace officers surrounded me, tasers at the ready. Ralph, my CAA—easily identifiable because he wore a digital nametag that read Hello My Name Is Ralph, Your Court Appointed Attorney—was squinting at his DT.

  Like my earth, this alter-earth seemed eco-friendly. The roads were cultivated clover. Every building had a green roof and vines covering the outside. Right next to me was a hemp bush, her buds fat and ready to harvest. Around me the streets were bustling with utopeons on biofuel scooters and kermits in the powerbocking lane. Blue sky, yellow sun, people looked like people. The real only difference I could discern was that everyone seemed to be overweight. But that might have been a Wisconsin thing, not a parallel world thing.

  “While you were unconscious,” Ralph said, “you were given your Miranda pill, so you are no doubt fully aware of your rights. As a former peace officer, that probably wasn’t necessary, but we go by the ebook here in Milwaukee.”

  I was an old pro at this, having been on the arresting end of this process hundred applause.

  &Bci carbon nanotubeI pus of times. I’d never taken a Miranda pill before, though. It tasted like justice, with a hint of synthetic cherry. When I closed my eyes, I could hear my rights read to me; a neurological phenomenon rather than an auditory one. The sound was all in my head. Ear pills, as they were called, wore off within an hour. They were useful for grocery lists, cheating on tests, and making sure suspects understood their rights. There were some pr0n applications as well, but I’d never tried those.

  Okay, I tried them once. But the moaning and squishy sounds were more annoying than erotic.

  “Judge Crouch is caught in traffic,” Ralph continued. “The state apologizes for the delay in your guarantee of a speedy and fair trial, and he has already agreed to reduce your predicted sentence by ten percent for being in breach of your protected Constitutional rights.”

  “What is my predicted sentence?” I asked.

  “Death. Though, if you sign a confession and plead guilty, I might be able to get it reduced to life plus four thousand years.”

  “What are the charges?”

  Ralph turned his DT around, showing me the screen. A computer-generated face of the Virtual Prosecutor appeared. He looked like that old 2D movie actor, John Wayne, and spoke with a similar drawl.

  “Talon Ace Avalon, you’re charged with 462,009 counts of murder in the first degree.”

  A very long list of names began to scroll by. Alphabetically of course. I sighed, closing my eyes, hearing my Miranda rights repeat again.

  “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was ghastly.”

  I peeked and saw Judge Crouch—easily identifiable because he wore a digital nametag that read Hello My Name Is Judge Crouch—smoothing out the wrinkles in his black judicial robe, which was hemmed up over the ankle so it didn’t get tangled in his rocket skates. He was very short and kind of resembled a weasel.

  “Good afternoon, your honor,” said Ralph.

  The computer generated prosecutor repeated the greeting.

  “Good afternoon.” Judge Crouch pressed his nametag and a gavel appeared on the screen, striking a sound block. “Court is now in session. Has the defendant been given his Miranda pill?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “And does the defendant understand the charges against him?”

  Ralph nudged me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How does the defendant plead?”

  “Not guilty,” I said. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Your honor,” drawled the Virtual Prosecutor, “we have timecast video of the defendant destroying the entire city of Boise, Idaho.” the antidote for the nanopoison to get potato chipset

  The VP’s face was replaced by the timecasting video of Alter-Talon pressing the button that imploded Boise. I’d seen the footage before, but it was still horrible to view. The entire town was sucked into a single point and vanished.

  “The prosecution rests,” said the VP.

  “That’s not me,” I said. “That’s an alternate version of me from a para
llel universe.”

  “The ID chip clearly shows it is Talon Ace Avalon,” the VP said, adjusting the viewing settings and showing an X-ray close-up of Alter-Talon’s arm. His ID, and his DNA, matched mine exactly.

  Judge Crouch nodded. “Indeed it does. Do you dispute this evidence, Mr. Court Appointed Attorney?”

  “No, your honor. But I would like a moment to confer with my client.”

  “Moment granted.”

  Ralph turned to me. “They’re probably going to electrocute you, but I can ask the court to be merciful and give you a lethal injection instead.”

  “I can prove I didn’t do it,” I said. “Do a trace on my chip. You’ll find another person with my ID running around, right now.”

  “Mr. Prosecutor?” the judge said.

  “I’ll check on that.” The VP’s face was replaced by a map of the USAC. There was only a single blinking dot, and a satellite camera quickly zoomed in to me, kneeling there. “Nope, no other Talon Ace Avalon found.”

  That’s because Alter-Talon was blocking his chip. I closed my eyes, trying to think of how to get out of this, but my Miranda rights kept repeating, over and over, interrupting my train of thought.

  “Can I call a witness?” I asked.

  “Witnesses don’t matter in cases where timecast evidence is present, your honor,” said the VP.

  “This witness will prove that ID chips aren’t infallible,” I said, “and can be duplicated.”

  The judge looked at his watch. “Okay, but you have to make it quick. I’ve got to be at an assault case across town in seven minutes.”

  “Do a search for my wife, Vicki Maria Avalon.”

  Again, the VP’s face was replaced by a map. But this time, there were two blinking lights. That meant two Vickis with the same ID chip.

  The judge frowned. “Huh. Never saw that before.”