Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “A little faith, sweetheart, if not in me then in a higher power. All we have to do is look for the signs that our higher power is trying to communicate with us, interpret the messages correctly, and act on them, and we’ll be fine. We can’t ever know every ramification of our actions, but He can.”

  “And how does this higher power speak to us?”

  “One thing at a time, sweetie. Let’s deal with priority number one, infecting those people before they call an end to that town meeting.”

  She sighed. “You’re evading the question. Never a good sign. Though your ‘no way to tell except to run the experiment’ argument holds merit.”

  They stepped into the middle of the street and were nearly run over. Notchka held her hand up in time at the passing truck, and stopped it cold. The driver went flying out of the window. He lay on the pavement face down and with the bottom half of him peeled down to bone, judging from the skid marks. “Let’s hope that’s not one of the signs God is trying to tell us something.”

  Clearly, if she could read minds, she certainly hadn’t been wasting any energy reading his mind. Or she’d know that he’d shared the same concerns not too long ago. He’d bestow the sagacity of his own reasoning on the subject to her later, when they had the luxury of more time.

  They headed inside the church building with the town hall gathering.

  THE NEXUS TIMELINE

  TEN

  Kendra crawled out of bed beside Torin and sauntered over to her vanity. Her normally long, flowing auburn hair was a mess. She passed her hand through it with a sense of hopelessness. She caught sight of him sitting up on the mattress ogling her. It troubled her that if he chose to let his mop of straight, dirty-blond hair grow out as long as hers they could pass as sisters, or lesbian lovers. Not because his look was all that androgynous, but because his beauty was just that ageless and flawless. “You’re the ninth wonder of the world,” he said, “you know that?”

  She smiled. “You’re prone to exaggeration.”

  “I’m prone to piercing and profound intuitive insights into the nature of reality, which is all the more reason you should respect my proclamations.”

  “Stop making me smile this early in the morning. It’ll just make my face crack all the more. I forgot to take off my makeup last night.”

  “You don’t wear makeup.”

  “God, you mean those cracks around my eyes are permanent?” She stuck her face up to the mirror and glared at herself with mock intensity.

  His eyes twinkled at her. Still, all she could think of was she was aging faster than him. It wasn’t very noticeable now. But it would be someday. A testament to their different takes on life, she supposed.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” Torin said, reading her mind. “An overgrown child like myself, I can’t imagine feeling married to someone who looks old enough to be my mother could be anything other than a soothing thought.”

  She brushed her hair, applying pressure to her scalp with the bristles in hope the pain would help push any sense of him out of her head. “You imagine there’s some parallel universe in which we don’t end up in bed with one another?” she said.

  “Not a one in the infinitely many.”

  “Well, certainly not married like we are. Maybe there’s one in which we’re divorced but retain the friends with benefits part.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. The way you get inside my head sometimes is a little creepy. Being married to a psychic isn’t the easiest thing.”

  “We don’t exactly do easy.”

  “You got me there. Speaking of which, time to get to the office to see if any of those detectives working for me got a break on the case.” She set down the brush.

  “I’ll come with you.” He hopped out of bed, making no effort to conceal his private parts. She supposed he had more reason to be confident in that area than most men, but his lack of shyness bothered her all the same. It seemed appropriate that a person have enough nagging self-doubts to be crippling. That was normal. That was human. Torin never seemed to have any of those, just a childlike zeal for life and a desire to rush headlong into the next adventure.

  He wrapped his hands around her from behind and planted kisses on her. She responded to each one as if being marred by a hot branding iron. “Don’t you have a coroner’s practice to get to?”

  “I have coroners who can handle the day to day trials well enough. Anything they can’t handle, they’ll call me. Until then I’m entirely at your disposal for the case of the century.”

  She undid his arms, like one king snake trying to devour another, and flung both snakes their separate ways. “You forget, this is 2034. This is the case of the month at best. If shocking headlines continue at this pace, it’ll be the case of the hour before long, before it too is forgotten, buried under the deluge of mind-numbing happenings that none of us can think our way clear of.”

  “Now I wonder if there is a parallel universe in which you’re not entirely undone by future shock,” he said, ignoring her ignoring him, and kissing her behind her ear and nibbling on her shoulder.

  “Present shock, darling, present shock. There was a time when you had to wait for the future to happen. Now it’s falling out of the sky and the only thing left to do is duck. No waiting necessary.”

  “Fine, let’s go get our morning dose of present shock. Unlike you I respond well to my shock treatments, probably why my pecker stays pointed north no matter what direction we’re heading in.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  He surveyed the room for signs of his clothes, evidently intent on putting the same stale ones on; probably because it saved on decision making.

  The cell phone rang. It’s location indeterminate. No matter. The video came up on the vanity, filling the mirror. “Whoa! Remind me to call you every morning,” Davenport said with his big smile threatening to slice through the rest of his face. “What is it, Davenport?” Kendra’s tone was doing a poor job of masking her impatience. “Besides, you’re gay, or don’t you recall?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” he said with the same big dumb smile on his face. His mixed Mexican-African American heritage allowed him to sculpt his hair better than most. He kept it short with just three slashes to either side above his sideburns. It gave his otherwise soft, round face some edginess. Which, in this context, made him seem just a bit pervy. “Oh yeah,” he said, finally, “why I called. I ran an algorithm, well, let me back up; I hacked into the drones flying weather reconnaissance for farmers across ninety-percent of the U.S., inserting an algorithm that would alert me to spiking telepresence. Did you know that most farmers farm indoors, these days? Yeah, it was quite troubling. I expected to get my nature groove on, instead it was just oases of barren countryside surrounded by seas of flat-roofed factory-farms. I guess with global warming and climate instability…”

  Kendra stopped blinking and furrowed her brows. “Get to the point, Davenport.”

  “There’s a small town in Alaska that blew a reading that would make NORAD stand up and take notice.”

  “And why hasn’t NORAD stood up and taken notice?”

  “Probably because they have far better ways of tracking the bioenhanced, and any psychic worth their salts is either on their payroll or dead or hunkered down, just as protected by corporate interests. As to all those low-budget rogue self-enhancers, well, the FEDs probably have their hands full tracking them down.”

  “Not to mention,” Torin interjected, “our society is pretty much made up of lone wolves these days. Even married couples like us are in rare supply.”

  “Yeah,” Kendra said, “that’s because people are becoming freakier and more impossible by the minute.” She studied a freckle on her chest as if it might be cancer, rubbing it as if that might make it go away.

  “And,” Torin said, doing a better job of showing patience than she was, “the only value-add any of them has in the marketplace is their uni
que personas, the one way they have of coming at the world that’s entirely different than anyone else’s, and which can’t be automated. And keeping their edge requires a twenty-four hour commitment to become ever more all they can be, leaving precious little time for fraternizing.”

  “If you two are done philosophizing impotently about forces you’re powerless to do anything about, because whining about it at least reminds you that you have an ounce of humanity left…” Davenport said.

  “Yes, Davenport, appreciate the reality check.” Kendra went to brush her hair behind her shoulders with both arms and ended up flashing her breasts instead. “I guess we won’t be into the office this morning. We’re off to Alaska. Hope I have enough warm clothes.”

  “You won’t need any,” Torin said, “you’ll have me wrapped around you the entire time.”

  Both Davenport and Kendra rolled their eyes in sync. “And with that,” Davenport said, “I bid you a nice plane trip. Hey, at least the planes are hypersonic now, so you can get from New York to Juno and environs in twenty minutes. Just enough time to become a member of the mile high club.”

  “Not nearly enough time,” Torin said defensively.

  “For two people whose job it is to face reality,” Kendra grabbed his chin, “it’s a wonder we can see past all the lies we tell ourselves.” She gave him a quick peck on the lips.

  “Get out of the way,” Torin said, “he’s waiting to see me naked before he signs off, otherwise he’d have pulled the ripcord already.”

  “Glad I’m still transparent to someone.” Davenport smiled. As Torin gently nudged Kendra aside to give him the full Monty, Davenport added, “well worth the wait. Well worth the wait. Hold that!” He clicked a picture with his cell phone. “I can sign off in good conscience now. Bye!” And with that the mirror returned to being a mirror.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most patient detective of them all?” Kendra grimaced at Torin. He stepped behind her to resume wrapping her in his arms and nibbling on her neck.

  “That would be me, being as you’re blocking my view yet again,” Davenport’s voice cut in, this time without an image.

  She shook her head. “That’s so not right. Kill the connection now before I kill your career, Davenport.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  “So what do you think we’ll find?” Torin said, strapping into the space plane’s aisle seat, bubbling over with excitement as usual.

  “A bunch of people sipping dandelion wine, growing magic mushrooms, and sitting around in a lotus position all day, chanting ‘Om mani padme hum’,” Kendra answered deadpan. “Aren’t all these communes more or less alike?”

  “You have such a wretched disdain for alternative lifestyles. You’d think someone who’s seen as much of life in the buff as you have would be a little more open-minded.”

  “I’m very open-minded. I just think these places give way to the next Waco long before they give way to actual enlightenment. With cults, what’s more, usually comes some charismatic figure, and any number of broken souls willing to worship false gods if only it helps them to forget hating themselves for one minute.”

  “If you’re going to be jaded let’s at least take the diamond glazing off the jade stone before you scratch my eyes out with it.” He leaned over and wiped her portal window clean with his handkerchief.

  “Why, what do you think we’re going to find?”

  “Think about it,” he said, relaxing back into his seat. “Why does the lone wolf of lone wolves, Clyde Barker, surround himself with a network of psychics?”

  “Assuming he’s even there.”

  “Oh, he’s there. He hasn’t shown up on anyone else’s radar. And you said it yourself, his psychic shields were fading. So he had to build a bigger and better one while his apprentice came up to speed.”

  “That’s quite a detour.”

  “Which suggests…”

  It suddenly dawned on her. “Which suggests it’s a young kid who might not fully mature for some years. And if he has only weeks or months left…”

  “Precisely.”

  “You don’t found a psychic community in the middle of nowhere overnight, Torin. Even the most charismatic personalities need years to build any kind of following that loyal and willing to cut off ties with the rest of the world to such a degree that they only show up on our radar.”

  “Yes, well that one has me a bit stumped, I admit.”

  “You’re never stumped for long. You’re the man with answers to everything.”

  “You say that like it was a curse.”

  “I’m a detective. We kind of like to find out the answers on our own.”

  He wiped the monitors on back of the plane seats in front of him with a frenetic determination to get them spotless. Here was a man that never wanted the world he loved even slightly out of focus. “Why have you stuck with me all these years then?” he said, regarding her reflection in the monitor in front of her.

  “Because without the answers I can’t get to sleep at night. And left to my own, what I imagine is usually that much worse.”

  “So I’m an adult-size pacifier, like a bib, or a stuffed Santa you hug to get to sleep at night.” He primped himself, pulling at lint on his slacks, unconsciously trying to restore his damaged self-image.

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “Ha-ha. Droll. Very droll.”

  She kept her eyes peeled out the window at the space plane taking off, partly to hide her smile from him, partly to enjoy the takeoff.

  The plane wasn’t fully at altitude yet and he was already asleep, his head resting on her shoulder. “Let’s hope you’re more lucid from dream state than you are awake. Because looking out the widow, I’m not sure I like what I see.”

  The next pocket of air the plane rode bumped Torin’s head off her shoulder and roused him. “What the…? There isn’t enough atmosphere up here for a bumpy ride like that.”

  She shook her head. “You awaken and go to sleep faster than any man alive. No transitional state of any duration required. You’re like a year with only winter and summer, no falls or springs.”

  “I’m eternal sunshine, lady, learn to deal with it.” He gripped his seat handles as the plane lurched violently. “What was that? Felt like an atomic blast.”

  “Close. Look out the window.”

  He leaned over her, his face practically resting on her chest, and saw the fighter jets circling around for another round of rocket fire. “They’re pelting our shroom-eating back-to-the-landers.”

  “And so far, nothing. That invisible force field protecting the commune, it’s like something out of Star Trek.”

  “Only this one is procured with psychic energy.”

  She made one of her condescending faces. “You can’t know that for sure.”

  “You said it yourself, nothing much about these new age communes has changed since the Stone Age, and that includes their attitude towards technology. And that, my dear,” he said, returning his head to an upright position, “is why Clyde Barker got religion in a hurry.”

  “Only there’s still no way…”

  “I figured it out. If that blast hadn’t awakened me when it did, I’d probably have forgotten that I’d figured it out.”

  “Figured out what?”

  “Clyde’s latest secret.” The plane was coming in for a landing now, just close enough for him to see through the invisi-shield sheltering the community. The jet fighters had packed it in and darted off, probably why the pilot felt it safe enough now to land.

  “I can’t believe they’re letting us land and not diverting us.”

  “You forget, the planes are autopiloted nowadays. So there are no humans to panic and get funny ideas. Even if there were, look around you. No one else saw anything out their windows. Their mindchips were hacked. This means, as far as the government is concerned, this never happened. Their best way into that community now is to track those of us who have
any connection with it, which means giving us a free pass to come and go.”

  She took a deep breath and held it to help her compose herself. Her senses backed up everything he was saying. She was as mad at her own body for betraying her with painting a picture of the present she wanted no part of as she was mad at him for insisting no masking of false interpretations came between her and reality.

  “You ready to hear Clyde’s little secret, or you need another moment to cope with the fact that denial will not protect you this time?”

  She steeled herself with a power exhale and by gripping the handles of her seat. “Fine, go ahead. Give it to me.”

  “He traveled back in time to create that commune. I’m guessing about twenty years, judging by the cars on the road.”

  She had to admit, it did look like Havana, Cuba down there, with cars that had been mothballed in the U.S. decades earlier. “So he travels back in time, but still manages to stay off our radar for twenty years?”

  “According to quantum theory, any attempt to travel back in time just opens another timeline. That means this Clyde didn’t originate here. And he may have left to destinations unknown before he could pop up on our radar any sooner. The Clyde Barker we’re only recently acquainted with very possibly absconded from our reality the same way.”

  She felt her jaw clenching and her teeth grinding. “Okay, riddle me this, Sherlock, why does a guy who can travel back in time, need the protection of a commune full of psychics?”

  “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  ELEVEN

  Kendra grabbed the arm of the stewardess trying to slip past her with the mobile concession stand. She helped herself to a bottle of Jack Daniels and a shot glass, took a swig. “You can leave the bottle.”

  “I’ll take a nice healthy salad with olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing,” Torin said.

  The stewardess eyed Kendra. “When you’ve emptied the bottle, hit him over the head with it, will ya?” She moved on with her cart.