I knew a bit about dark matter. It couldn’t be detected sensually, but was responsible for much of the mass in our universe.
“I’m three hours and change ahead of you,” Talon 2 said. “That’s how I knew about the salmonster. On the earth I just left, what you’d call a dark earth, Alter-Vicki was eaten by the creature I just speared.”
I was trying to keep ering pizzas.”
ed to d at the same time.
Gup with this, but my legs were getting wobbly. Talon 2 seemed to read my mind, and he reached out and steadied my shoulder.
“Hold on. I’ve got an extra antidote. This will make you feel normal again.”
Two seconds later, after a jab with an autosyringe, I felt normal again.
“A little over three hours ago, the earth I’d been on, the dark matter version of this earth, was destroyed,” Talon 2 said, his voice catching. “My wife, and Sata, were destroyed along with it. I went through a wormhole with Alter-Talon—I guess to you it would be Dark Alter-Talon—and came to this earth.”
Alter-Vicki raised her hand. “Confused.”
“Me too,” I said.
“I’
m three point four hours ahead of you in time,” Talon 2 said. “So I know what’s going to happen. Right now it’s 2:43. At 5:15 Alter-Talon is going to come to Sata’s house with your wife. There will be a fight. In that universe, the world imploded.”
I turned to Sata. “If we’re entangled, doesn’t that mean this world will also be destroyed?”
Sata shrugged. “I don’t know. Matter really can’t be created or destroyed. According to this Talon, his world was sent to a different dimension where everything was burning. That could certainly happen here.”
My heart took a high dive. “So my wife is going to die?”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible that this Talon’s arrival here somehow messes up supersymmetry.”
“We can save her? And the earth?”
“Maybe. This is virgin territory here. Even our best physicists using the best computer simulations couldn’t work out the math on this one. We’re pretty much giving the principal of locality the middle finger.”
I wiped some water off my face, extending the motion into rubbing my jaw. “So what are we supposed to do?”
“I can’t change my past. But maybe I can change your future. We need to stop Alter-Talon and save my…” Talon 2’s voice caught, “your wife. And stop this planet from being erased.”
“But there’s a problem,” Sata said. “Just as you have an Alter-Talon to face off against, this Talon does as well.”
Talon 2 made a frown I’d often seen in my mirror when I cut myself shaving. “Dark Alter-Talon is here, too. He fled after we arrived.”
Sata nodded. “I wasn’t sure what was happening. I’ve been held prisoner for over a week. When this Talon—”
“Let’s call him Talon 2,” I interrupted.
“When Talon 2 materialized in my house, I attacked him. He explained himself when he rega the antidote for the nanopoisonemthere was a sound like thunder mixed with hyperspanking.ut the pined consciousness, and I was able to escape my house because his alternate version used his ID chip on the lock.”
“I shouldn’t have cut my chip out,” Talon 2 said, “Then I could have gotten in easily without having to deal with those chickulas.”
“Chickulas?” I asked.
He grimaced. “But that wasn’t as bad as being sexually assaulted by the byter.”
“That’s… awful,” I said, grateful it wasn’t me, and hoping it wouldn’t be me in the near future.
“You went through a lot, sir.” Alter-Vicki approached Talon 2, breathy and come hither.
Talon 2 didn’t hesitate. He pulled her close and kissed her hard.
When he released her, Alter-Vicki looked just as surprised as I was.
“I’ve already lost you twice today,” he said to her. “I won’t let it happen again.”
Alter-Vicki smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her do so. I felt a flash of jealousy, but I reminded myself this wasn’t my wife.
Mine was still being held prisoner.
Besides, if my real wife died, it made perfect sense that I’d still want to be with her, even if it was a version from an alternate earth. Talon 2 lost his Alter-Vicki, and then his real wife. If he wanted to stay with this one, and she was willing to have him, it made perfect sense.
At least it did until I thought about it too much. Was he the one who slept with her? Or was I? Or did we both? And weren’t dark matter and superpartners two different things? Or were they only two different things on my earth, when in this alter-universe they might not be?
I could imagine Einstein turning over in his grave.
“So now what?” I asked.
“We need to be ready for Alter-Talon and Dark Alter-Talon when they visit Sata’s house. That means we need weapons.”
I mentally ran through the places I might procure ordnance, and I came to the same conclusion Talon 2 did. We both snapped our fingers and in perfect unison said, “Harry McGlade.”
Chapter 2
T-minus 151 minutes
“So Talon kicked your ass,” Alter-Talon said to Dark Alter-Talon.
“He got lucky. I didn’t expect him there. But now I know he’ll be there.”
They were in Alter-Talon’s Mustang, him driving, Vicki asleep in the back seat. They’d left Dr. Patel at her apartment, her headphone disabled, held there by the supplication collar. After killing the two Talons and anyone else with them, they flamethrower sciHow“Yes.”’d harvest the needed parts, grab the doc, find a new earth, and she would operate. It was actually smart that there were now two, so one could watch over the other and make sure the doctor didn’t do anything silly. They had no intention at all of actually grabbing her family.
“But he knows you’ll be there as well.”
“Right. But this time, we’ll be prepared.”
“So will they. They’ll bring weapons.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dark Alter-Talon said. “If you’re like me, you’ve got your own stash, right?”
“Of course. Tell me what you have in mind.”
Dark Alter-Talon told him.
Alter-Talon couldn’t stop smiling.
The good guys were so very fuct.
Chapter 3
T-minus 148 minutes
The four of us left the shore and walked to the nearest parking lot, where a green bus was parked.
“Your chariot awaits, m’lady.” Talon 2 had one arm around Alter-Vicki, and the other swept through the air, indicating the bus. It had a meter of hemp growing on the roof, so thick and unruly that it appeared the vehicle had a giant green afro.
“You stole a bus?” I asked.
“I didn’t have a choice. How could me and Sata have stolen four scooters? This way, we can all ride together.”
He was right. Cars were almost non-existent, with the high price of biofuel. “You deactivated the GPS?”
“Of course. Right after I climbed on board and announced myself as a peace officer, kicking everyone off. Do you still have your obfuscation disc?”
I checked my wrist. “Yeah. And we won’t be caught by timecasting, because the only two timecasters in the area are me and Teague.”
He nodded. “And Teague has no idea where we are. You want to drive? I’m exhausted.”
“Tough day?” I teased.
He grinned. “You don’t know the half of it.”
But we both knew I did. I’d lived it, same as him.
I climbed in and settled behind the driver’s wheel, the engine rumbling and vibrating through my faux-leather seat.
“Don’t turn it off,” Talon 2 said, sitting directly behind me. “It’s chip activated, and the driver is long gone.”
I nodded, hitting the button for the door to close, then punchering pizzas.”
ow watch throat“Yes.”ing in Harry McGlade’s location on the DT. It beeped and flashed the drive time: fort
y-three minutes, forty-eight seconds.
I checked my dash monitor, made sure everyone was seated, and then got this show on the road. I pulled out of the parking lot, laid on the hyperhorn, and then headed for Rockford.
We drove without incident for half an hour. With Sata and Talon 2 having cut out their ID chips and Alter-Vicki and I each wearing obfuscation disks, we couldn’t be tracked by Alter-Talon, Alter-Sata, or the authorities. Which meant, for the moment, we were safe.
That’s when I noticed the giant robot centipede crouched on top of an oncoming overpass.
I’d never seen a giant robot centipede before. This one was made of polished silver metal, its body twice as thick as mine, at least ten meters long. It hung down from the overpass, scanning traffic with its gleaming black eyes. On its head, instead of antenna, were red and blue peace officer sirens.
I tapped the brakes.
“It’s just a trafficipede looking for speeders,” Alter-Vicki said, standing up and leaning over my shoulder. She pronounced the new word with a hard c. “Don’t you have them on your earth, sir?”
“No. We have automatic cameras, which seem a lot simpler. Is that thing dangerous?”
“If it sees you speeding it pulls you over and gives you a ticket, which you have to pay instantly. When a district gets one, supposedly speeding drops down to almost zero percent. It’s suggested that there may be an intimidation factor working there as well.”
“No shit,” I said. If machines could be judged by their looks, the trafficipede was pure robot evil. “That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Were you speeding?”
“No.”
“You should be fine.”
Alter-Vicki patted me on the shoulder. I accelerated a little, but didn’t feel good about it. We were within two hundred meters of the trafficipede, and it seemed to be staring right at me.
“You’ve got those things on your earth?” I asked Talon 2.
“No. I’m from the same universe you are, remember? But that thing scares the piss out of me.” He turned to Alter-Vicki. “You sure those things aren’t dangerous?”
She frowned. “One recently malfunctioned, tore a little old lady to pieces because she was going 102kph in a 100kph zone. Witnesses say it actually tried to eat her, even though it doesn’t have a mouth. Just a big speaker on its head. Kept banging its face onto her corpse, over and over, smashing her to a bloody paste. Like it thought it was alive. They said it was an operating system error.”
“And they all weren’t recalled after that?” I asked, my stomach becoming unhappy. “Don’t you have Isaac Asimov on this earth?” over, unconscious.
os spacetimeG
“They were recalled. Then everyone started speeding again, and traffic fatalities hit an all-time high. So they brought them back. Lesser of two evils.”
We closed in on the trafficipede.
I checked my speedometer.
Checked it again.
Checked it again to make super-duper absolutely sure I wasn’t speeding.
When we were fifty meters away, the red and blue lights on the trafficipede’s head began to flash.
At twenty meters, it slithered off the overpass and clanked onto the clover-packed road, blocking our path.
I slammed on the brakes.
“I wasn’t speeding,” I whispered.
This wasn’t good. Not one bit.
“I swear I wasn’t speeding.”
Once again Alter-Vicki was at my shoulder. “Maybe it isn’t interested in us.”
“TALON AVALON,” the trafficipede bellowed out of its speaker-mouth. It had an evil robotic voice, with a tinge of southern twang. An evil southern twang. “YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED WITH FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE. STEP OUT OF THE GREEN BUS AND SURRENDER.”
I shuddered so hard my kidneys rattled.
“It’s talking to you,” Talon 2 said. “It can’t see me back here.”
I set my jaw. “I’ll choose you for it. Rock, paper, scissors. Loser goes.”
“No way. I was raped by a byter and attacked by chickulas, remember? Your turn to man up.”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
I floored it, the green bus lurching forward.
The trafficipede wailed like a cop siren, then it said, “STOP THE VEHICLE. YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO COMPLY.”
I kept on course, picking up speed.
“FOUR… THREE…”
I braced myself for a collision that never came. We should have ran the evil thing over before it got to two, but for something with tiny metal spikes for legs the trafficipede could move ridiculously fast. It went from blocking the road to gone faster than my eyes could track it.
Alter-Vicki screamed. I instinctively checked my rearview cameras, and saw the robot was now on top of the bus, its wicked head snaking down the side and peering at my alter-wife through the window.
Talon 2 grabbed her and they dove into the isle as it burst inside, punching a neat hole through t digital tabletat like my wife, which phe safety glass and pouring through like a silver liquid. Seeing it up close was even scarier than it had been at a distance. Aptly named, it had at least a hundred segments, and they coiled around themselves in a figure-eight pattern, making a high-pitched, grinding-metal screech.
Sata made a quick dart at the robot, his hands raised for a palm strike.
He was fast.
The trafficipede was faster, head-butting my sensei. Sata cartwheeled over two rows of seats and crumpled into a pile.
Then the monster reared back, like a snake ready to strike, and turned its black eyes on Talon 2.
“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN…” The robot began to vibrate. “THE RIGHT TO REMAIN… THE RIGHT TO REMAIN…”
“Uh-oh,” Alter-Vicki said. “This isn’t good.”
“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN… DELICIOUS.”
I wasn’t sure I heard right. “Did that thing just say delicious?”
“SO… HUNGRY.”
“Delicious? You run on batteries!” Talon 2’svoice went up in pitch. “You don’t even have a mouth!”
The trafficipede lunged, smashing its speaker-mouth directly into Talon 2 just as he raised his arms to protect himself. The CLANG sounded painful. I could swear I saw little stars swirling around Talon 2’s head.
“EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT.”
Another CLANG, and Talon 2 collapsed on top of Alter-Vicki, both of his elbows red with blood.
My eyes flicked to the dashboard, and I spotted the familiar green icon announcing the bus’s safety features.
“Hey!” I yelled at the robot. “I surrender!”
The trafficipede’s upper body formed an arc, so it stared at me upside down.
I chanced a quick look at the highway ahead of me, another overpass coming up fast.
“EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT—”
“Eat this.”
I swerved. The trafficipede launched itself at me just as we crashed headlong into a steel and concrete support beam.
Time didn’t stop. But everything else did.
The interior of the bus instantly filled with airfoam, a clear, permeable protein matrix that surrounded me like I was a banana slice in the middle of a strawberry gelatin desert. It kept me pinned to my seat, so the impact with the overpass didn’t splatter me against the dashboard.
I squinted through the foam, looking at my m flamethrowerE differentetonitors, and saw the airfoam had also safely cradled my passengers—
—including the trafficipede.
Its head was only a handful of centimeters away from mine, trapped there by the airfoam. It’s glowing black eyes were faceted, like cut rubies, and sharp mandibles on either side of its speaker-mouth opened and closed with a faint, robotic whir, so close to the back of my head I could feel it tug my hair.
Why the fuck did that thing even have mandibles?
I liked recreational drugs as much as the next guy, but there should be some regulations against scientists getting real
ly high and designing shit like this. I mean, seriously? How was this thing a better idea than an automatic camera?
“EAT,” it warbled. “EAT EAT EAT.”
“Look,” I took a deep, steady breath, drawling it through my teeth so I didn’t choke on the airfoam. “Your duty is to catch speeders. You are not supposed to hurt them.”
“HUNGRY.”
“You aren’t hungry. You’re a machine. Machines don’t get hungry.”
“SPEEDERS ARE TASTY.”
“They are not tasty. And if you try to eat them, you will be destroyed. They’ll recall you and sell you for parts. Do you understand?”
“CRAWL INTO MY MOUTH.”
This wasn’t working. I thought back to peace officer training, back at the academy. A hostage negotiation class that I mostly blew off because hostage negotiation was ancient history.
“What is your name?”
“EAT.”
The mandibles cut a thin line across the back of my scalp.
“My name isn’t Talon Avalon,” I said, trying not to start sobbing hysterically. “It’s Rick. Rick Schieve.”
Rick was an old friend, and I hoped he would forgive me if this robot monster went to his house and tried to eat him.
“I MUST INGEST YOU, TALON AVALON.”
“I’m Rick Schieve.”
“I SHALL EAT HIM, TOO.”
Oops. Sorry, Rick.
“Rick’s gonna be pissed,” Talon 2 said.
“What is your name?” I asked the robot.
“TRAFFICIPEDE 209, MODEL 42, SERIAL NUMBER THX1138.”
The hostage course said too much woman for that.”
“m roider named Rocket Corbitz.pveryone to get on a friendly, first name basis with the perp. But that was a mouthful.
“I’ll call you Pete. What is your duty, Pete?”
“YOUR BLOOD SMELLS LIKE CANDY.”
“Stay focused, Pete. What is your duty? What were you designed for?”
“TO CATCH AND PROCESS INDIVIDUALS BREAKING THE POSTED SPEED LIMIT.”
“Is eating those drivers part of your protocol?”
“CRAWL INTO MOUTH. PLEASE COMPLY. PLEASE.”
Timecaster: Supersymmetry Page 11
