Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  “Perhaps nothing. I read somewhere that you don’t always get rewarded for sitting for hours in meditation. It’s supposed to be its own reward. I guess it falls under the tail wagging the dog area. The higher self does not like to be made to jump through hoops at the lower self’s bidding.”

  “That’s just great. Please tell me you have some workarounds.”

  “Just one. Has to do with what Davenport was saying earlier about parallel universes. If the parallel versions of us can make some progress, not on whatever cases they’re working on but on themselves, make some life changing realizations, well then, it ripples across the heavens, makes our job easier. It’s just possible any intuitive flash we get in the here and now comes at the expense of a breakthrough we make in another lifetime.”

  “I guess if there are infinitely many versions of us out there, it isn’t too much to ask that at least one of them is less incorrigible than we are,” she said with all the conviction of a field mouse staring down a tom cat.

  “I mean what are the odds?” he said, just as feebly.

  SOLARIS TIMELINE

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “You’re joking, right?” Torin modeled before the standing mirror that had no right being in the squad room. “I look like a big game hunter going on safari.” Perhaps with his long straight hair draped behind his shoulder, the image was more like that of a Native American scout.

  “That’s the general idea, yes,” Davenport said absently, making sure everything was in order for their little expedition.

  The elephant gun was currently aimed at Torin’s reflection. Torin pointed the barrel squarely between his eyes. “I grant you this is great therapy for getting over myself.” He lowered the rifle. “What is this mirror doing here anyway?”

  Davenport walked over and angled the mirror to the Ficus that was formerly on Davenport’s desk, now grown into a bantam tree and situated on the floor. The interlaced trunks that slithered over one another to emulate Charles Atlas flexing and contorting became more active before the reflection in the mirror. “Really seems to motivate it,” Davenport said with a big dumb smile on his face.

  “What did you put in it to get it to grow up so fast?”

  “Muscle Man fertilizer, of course. You and your dumb questions.” Davenport went back to examining the equipment Torin and Kendra would be packing on their journey, in real Boy Scout fashion, checking everything twice against his list. He seemed more nervous about their departure than the two tourists he was about to ship off to a parallel universe.

  “Focus, you two,” Kendra said.

  Torin turned to check out her outfit. “Well, for what it’s worth, the safari getup really works on you.” With the long alternating curly locks of yellow and purple, she looked like she might just be a shaman from the modern world traveling to Africa to see how the old world shamans did things.

  She pushed him out of the way to see how she looked in the full-length mirror. “Not bad. Though I’m with Torin on this one. I didn’t sign up for acting class when I agreed to this gig.”

  “Yes, you did,” Davenport said, looking up from the crammed backpack. “An ordinary undercover assignment would be bad enough. But you’re looking to blend into an entirely new world, far far across the multiverse.”

  “And you happen to know that world in that parallel universe is just one big Stuart Granger movie come to life?” Kendra said.

  “I would like to know what this city’s chief coroner and lead homicide detective are doing besides next generation dinner theater,” Torin cut in, “as much as I’m enjoying playing along, unlike my spoilsport partner over here.”

  She shot him a nasty look.

  Davenport sighed with impatience at the two of them. “According to the planetary AI…”

  “We have a planetary AI?” Kendra and Torin said at once.

  Davenport shook his head. “Look, guys and dolls, you two have to do a better job of keeping up with the times. Yeah, planetary AI. The city AIs decided to merge their super-intellects and time-share a slice of their thinking time to handle issues like this, extra-planetary concerns. According to it, the world you’re heading for, based on Kardassian’s math, is, well, at once a little more primitive than ours, and a little more advanced.”

  “And the planetary AI knows this because?” Torin said, furrowing his brow.

  “Because, like the city AIs, it thinks across all parallel universes at once. It’s rather all-seeing, at least in the probabilistic sense. Doesn’t exactly deal in certainties at that level.”

  “Which is why it’s still letting us call the shots.” Torin’s eyes went vacant to accommodate the extrapolation he was doing on his own.

  “It’s not sure how it feels about Clyde Barker making all the worlds in all the universes more psychically permeable or impressionable,” Davenport said. “All in an effort to boost enlightenment by ensuring the most sentient minds, that is, the most evolved, influence the others.”

  “Clarify for me how he intends to do this again,” Kendra said. “I’m still a little fuzzy on the details.”

  “Barker will insinuate his virus,” Davenport explained, “into the water supply or the atmosphere of various planets to force enlightenment on entire populaces. But these won’t just be any planets. They’ll be sited along the Ley lines flowing through the universe, which are in turn connected to the Ley lines that flow through our bodies. Ley lines acupuncturists have used to heal us for millennia. By amplifying the consciousness in these garden spot planets, he will extend its reach and healing power throughout the cosmos. Unsuspecting planets with sentient life, even those very remote from the Ley lines, will then find themselves awash in these higher spiritual energies, which will transform the consciousness of their inhabitants in turn. It’s game over. He’s forcing evolution from its Alpha to its Omega point in a flash, instead of allowing it to evolve at its own pace throughout the heavens.”

  “Okay, I think I got you,” Kendra said. “In the same way that freeing up the blocked chi energy along our energy meridians inside our bodies allows that energy to radiate through the entire body and heal every cell inside us, so the same principle, applied at a cosmic scale, transforms consciousness throughout all of creation.”

  “You got me, pretty purple and yellow haired girl,” Davenport said smiling.

  Torin scratched his chin. “It does make you wonder why we’re trying to stop him.”

  “Where have you two been? Seriously?” Davenport said. “It’s as if you were vacationing in a parallel universe all this time instead of only now getting ready to visit one. We discussed and debated all this already, ad nauseam. You two decided that people had a right not to be robbed of their childhood and adolescence, in the same way you were robbed of yours. Speaking metaphorically, and associating more primitive states of evolution with childhood and adolescence. You furthermore determined that an Age of Abundance, where anything which could be dreamed up could be manufactured on a dime for virtually nothing, might just be more Present Shock than some people can handle.”

  “Yes, of course, one man’s heaven is another’s hell,” Torin said.

  “You, furthermore, hypothesized that an Age of Abundance just frees people to free themselves. It prefaces an even greater era of self-empowerment. With people’s time freed up from base survival needs for the first time in history, and their minds upgraded by any number of means, all that augmented mind power had to go somewhere. It would ultimately go to opening up all of time and space, and putting the entire multiverse at our fingertips. It would become a make-a-wish world; anything we wanted, anywhere we wanted to go; nothing would be out of range. We would become like gods. And so, as we approach our own Omega point, you realized that people would want to look back over time to appreciate how far they’d come. But they couldn’t do that if the time bandit Clyde Barker had erased all of history with his methods.”

  “God, were we really that prescient?” Kendra said, staring at Torin.

  “D
avenport must have interrupted us mid-coitus. Without the tantric sex, I’m not sure either of us can see ourselves from one end of the room to the other without a cup of coffee, far less to the farthest reaches of time and space.”

  “Ahem.” Davenport finished clearing his throat. “You did say that when we’re that centered and in the moment, we’re most open to insights flowing in from the versions of ourselves in other timelines, and what they’ve learned, so we don’t have to make the same mistakes.”

  Torin took Kendra and kissed her. “God, we’re good.”

  Davenport just rolled his eyes and groaned. “Now that you’ve had your ‘it’s all about us’ moment… According to me and Kardassian, he’s the one I bounce ideas off of, you know, kind of like you two do with each other…”

  “When you’re not taking advantage of his catatonic state to molest him,” Torin said.

  “In an effort to bring him back to reality,” Davenport replied defensively. “Well, according to our brain trust, the really smart thing for Clyde Barker to do is to tweak his virus so that it contributes to the amplifying effect of the Ley lines. It in effect makes the infected parties more in tune with their own and the planet’s energy bodies. If that were true in our world, we wouldn’t need acupuncture to set us right.”

  “Yes.” Torin absently scratched his chin with the barrel end of the elephant gun. “I can see how that would hasten the ripple effect across the heavens. It’s what I would do.”

  “And Clyde Barker is ten times the brainy scientist you are,” Davenport said.

  Torin snapped back into the moment, curtailing his getting lost in his head, the critique affecting him like the whip on a racehorse to get across the finish line with this assignment first before going on another one in his mind. “Thanks for that,” he said. “Reminds me that if I’m to be all I can be, and narrow the gap of genius between myself and Clyde…”

  “You need to face your fears,” Kendra said, cutting in. “What fears are we chasing down, incidentally?”

  “Our fears of insignificance,” Torin said. “This Clyde Barker is bigger than anything in all of history, hell, he’s bigger than history itself. Squarely putting us on the map of deep and meaningful.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kendra said.

  “I dare you to shoot a hole in my logic,” Torin replied. “Here, take the elephant gun if you like.”

  “Anything that brings out the kid in you this much can’t be all that evolutionary,” Kendra said.

  “And anything which brings out the spoilsport in you has got to be but the latest setback.” Torin grimaced as he thought about it some more. “Maybe that’s how it is. You have to get worse before you can get better. Like an alcoholic bottoming out.”

  She grabbed the gun from him. “Maybe.” She checked it to make sure it wasn’t going to blow up in his face. To him it was just a toy, to her it was an actual weapon which may or may not save their asses. “Then again, you always have a convenient rationale on hand for anything which might come up.” She snapped the barrels back into place. “For your information, that psychic gift of yours that allows you to see patterns where others just see chaos, is meant to enlighten you and the rest of us. Not keep us forever trapped being the incorrigible people we are. If there is a God, and there is such a thing as mortal sin, that strikes me as the greatest sin of all.”

  Torin crossed his arms defensively. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “You two finished pecking at one another like a pair of damn vultures? As much as I love the nature theme,” Davenport said, glancing fondly over at his Tree Man, Charles.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re done,” Torin said, still sounding deflated.

  “Remind me again how we know which of these garden spot planets Clyde Barker went to first, which I presume is where we’re going?” Kendra said.

  “Kardassian?” Davenport said impatiently. “Psychic extraordinaire, like our friend Torin here, only specializing in tracking time bandits like a lighthouse beacon. In ancient times they had geomancers that helped to site the gothic cathedrals on energy spots where Ley lines running through the Earth intersected. That way anyone stepping inside church would instantly feel more connected with God. Think of Kardassian as our Geomancer to the stars. You even speculated that he might be the same man that brought us acupuncture in a previous incarnation.”

  Kendra and Torin shifted their focus to one another, found each other’s arms again, kissed, then said at the same time, “God we’re good.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but those revelations that will help us advance the case all came from me and Kardassian.”

  “Let him have his moment,” Kendra said to Torin.

  Davenport grimaced, but decided it was just better to ignore them, and fitted the backpack over Torin. “Wow,” Torin said. “It’s like I’m not wearing anything at all.”

  “Yeah, I swapped out every component for the aerogel version, especially made for mountaineering backpackers. Gets the weight down from about a hundred sixty pounds to about six pounds. The military uses this shit whenever they have to send in humans to do what the robots can’t. Best of all…” He pressed a remote in his hand, and the backpack disappeared, which Torin confirmed in the standing mirror. “Just don’t you forget it’s there,” Davenport said.

  “Yeah, if something grabs hold of it, it could tear my arms clear off.” Torin grabbed the straps of the backpack as if trying to condition his body to feel its presence, despite how un-irritating it was.

  “Actually the straps will disengage, and so will the camouflage, allowing you to find the pack easily,” Davenport reassured him, as he was fitting the next pack to Kendra.

  “Why don’t you and Kardassian come with?” Torin said.

  Davenport looked at him as if he was trying to find the patience with a retarded child. “With him spending so little time in body, and me being far more comfortable around a computer keyboard than out in the field? Thanks, but if you want to get us killed there is probably a more humane way to do it.”

  “And you’re just going to let your limitations define you the rest of your lives?” Torin said.

  “He’s got a point.” Kendra squirmed under the backpack like a snake trying to get out of its skin. “If you’re going to be as unchangeable as the furniture, I’m going to toss you out the next time the office needs a makeover.”

  “Emotional blackmail? You must be speaking to the wife.” Davenport helped her get comfortable with the pack. His face telecasted he was doing that absently and thinking about what she was proposing. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “If it forces Kardassian to be more in his body, that means better sex for me. Maybe even a chance at real love.”

  “What about the wife trapped back in the 1950s reality back home?” Torin said.

  “I don’t see why I can’t keep playing the part. Maybe I can talk her into a 1960s retreat for a while, just to keep things fresh between us, and to get her more comfortable with the swingers’ ‘if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’ lifestyle. I’ll have to keep my acting abilities honed if I’m going to start tagging along with you two more.”

  “Very well then. Now that we have that sorted,” Torin said, anxious to depart.

  “Not quite.” Davenport passed his hand through his hair, as immutably molded as a Henry Moore sculpture, as he appeared to be contemplating his next move. “I need to take a nano-cocktail that will basically turn me into someone who’ll be a lot smoother out in the field, enhance my hand-eye coordination and accelerate my motor skills.”

  “Seriously?” Kendra said. “Since when do we have that technology?”

  Torin gave him a look to communicate that this was breaking news to him as well.

  “Dudes and dudettes, it’s right next to the coffeemaker in the break room. Has been for the last three years. Seriously, what happened to the Torin and Kendra I know? Let me guess, my Torin and Kendra were killed, and you two, here on assignment from your par
allel universe, figured, what the hell, you like it here better, so you’ll just blend, right?”

  The two gave one another a look wondering if there was some other explanation beyond not being able to keep up with the times, not sure themselves. “Let’s just go with the ‘see hoof prints, think horses, not zebras’, explanation for now, shall we?” Torin said.

  They followed Davenport into the break room as he configured the nano-cocktail machine to make the potion he wanted. Torin and Kendra eyed one another. “Honestly, I thought it was a Slurpee machine,” Kendra said, “hate the things.”

  “I thought it was an energy drink machine. That’s all I need is more energy.”

  Torin grabbed Davenport’s arm before he could bring the drink to his mouth. “What happened to just watching a movie and using the subliminals to drive the makeover, being as we’re more impressionable than dough in a waffle iron?”

  “That’s newer technology, dude. What, you want me to go with something that’s untested?”

  “I guess not,” Torin said.

  “And you can bet, just when I need to rely on the new me the most, the old me will find some way of crawling out from under the rubble of the old persona, subliminal reprogramming or no. Nah, uh.” Davenport guzzled his cocktail, dropped the empty glass, which Torin tried to catch, but he wasn’t fast enough. So Davenport caught it.

  “Nice,” Torin said, nodding.

  “You sure you don’t want one?” Davenport said.

  He and Kendra shook their heads. “Nah, we’re more mind over matter people. But the bottoms up approach strikes me as having merit,” Torin replied.

  “Now we’re ready to go,” Davenport announced. “Let me just grab Kardassian.”

  “Don’t you want to give him one of these cocktails before we blast off?” Torin asked.

  “Nah. If he’s willing to work that much harder to change himself, means he loves me that much more.”

  “That’s unfair, manipulative, possibly even sick and twisted.” Torin slapped him on the back. “I think you really are ready for marriage.”