Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  “Yeah, those two,” he said smiling and kissing her. “If you’re right, the test personas are going to take some breaking in.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I remember when we gave ourselves a day to shake off the last case.”

  “To recover, sure. Only now recovery lies in the next case, and the one after that.”

  “Which ones do we choose now?”

  “How about whichever one lands in our laps, in our precinct?” Torin said.

  “What about looking for synchronicities to guide us?”

  “Don’t see as anything has changed on that score. The Universal Mind talks the way the Universal Mind talks. But remember, the intention is to help us embrace this more egalitarian age, to do willingly what Clyde Barker was trying to force on us. Not to prove how smart we are. How much larger than life. Or to seek any other form of ego-gratification. Intention is everything. The universe is a wish machine, after all, so we’re going to be careful what we wish for.”

  Since getting back from the farmer’s world, Kendra felt doubly out of step, both with herself and with the times. In an Age of Abundance, focused on celebrating all of life’s basic needs being met, she and Torin, ahead of most others, were already stepping into the Age of Empowerment that came next. With life’s necessities being met, soon everyone would be free to devote themselves wholeheartedly to setting themselves free for real, to escape this world and enter any and all others.

  Kendra and Torin were struggling to learn skills that the coming travelers of time and space would need to know in moving between worlds, and between timelines. Trying to get a lock on the direction that spelled continued evolution in an era that would soon let anyone be absolutely anything they wanted. Go anywhere they wanted. In a time when anything goes and the sky is the limit, how does one create a sense of direction for oneself?

  To find that out, Torin was right, she would need access to the Godhead, the Universal Mind, her Higher Self, call it what you will, by way of attuning to synchronicities, to help free her from her childhood conditioning and accompanying dysfunctional psychology if she were to do something other than keep repeating the past. But she also needed that attunement for better navigating the transpersonal realm, a realm that would take her into worlds where she could act out something besides early childhood traumas in new guises.

  Torin was right with the corollary concerns as well: never was there a time when being centered and in a state of constant waking and walking meditation more important; without it, synchronicities couldn’t be grasped, and the needle on her inner compass would simply spin.

  Though her self-guiding mechanisms remained busted, some voice inside her kept whispering, “Don’t lose sight of the time bandits.”

  “Oh, it’s you two,” the Kendra stand-in said, snapping the real Kendra out of her reverie, walking into the office right alongside the Torin lookalike. It was weird staring at their mirror opposites in the faces, Real Kendra thought.

  “Anything to report?” Real Kendra said, without missing a beat.

  “Lots. What do you care? You’re on a self-improvement kick. Join a spa like the rest of us, why don’t ya?” Doppelganger Kendra said.

  Real Kendra smiled. “I forgot for a second you were privy to my thoughts, being as you’re my thought projection. You’d do good to remember that the next time you’re feeling uppity.”

  “If I wasn’t looking forward to the nihilistic bliss of oblivion, I’d deck you,” Doppelganger Kendra said. “As it is, after a day like today, it’s just not worth the distraction.” With that, she bleeped out of existence.

  “And you, what are you waiting on?” Kendra said to Doppelganger Torin.

  “Why, your lip, of course? In oblivion there’ll be no way to put a face to my persecutors. Seems worth hanging around a second longer.”

  “Glad you guys aren’t any less the smart asses,” Real Torin said.

  “Got your reputation to look after,” Doppelganger Torin said, saluting Real Torin, then disappearing.

  Torin smiled. “They kind of grow on you, don’t they?”

  “Don’t you start.”

  Angela and Mayhem walked up to Torin and Kendra. “Wish I could say you two were sorely missed,” Angela said.

  “As it turns out,” Mayhem cut in, “your doppelgangers are even more annoying than you are. Probably a figment of the photocopy phenomenon. You know, having to prove they’re more real than real.”

  “How come you two walking carrots stopped playing us?” Kendra asked, recalling that they were plant people, per Davenport’s revelation prior to their departing this timeline, and clearly still getting used to the idea; witness the snarky humor psychic defense mechanism.

  “Didn’t need to,” Angela explained. “Sometime into your journey they appeared on their own.”

  “We assumed it was because Clyde Barker had succeeded in making the timelines all that much more psychically impressionable, even at a distance,” Mayhem said.

  Kendra and Torin regarded one another, gulping. “A reasonable hypothesis,” Torin said.

  “Let’s just hope it’s wrong,” Kendra interjected, “like so many reasonable hypotheses we detectives are in the habit of forming.”

  Angela and Mayhem shrugged their indifference on the matter and walked off, returning to their prior duties.

  With Torin’s eyes still very much locked on Kendra, he said, “Like I just got done saying, it’s gonna take a while for these new personas to establish themselves as the new baseline. Let’s just be grateful for the reminder as to what the real stakes are.”

  “Let’s,” she said, warily.

  She heard the same annoying sound he did. They both turned towards it, knowing exactly what it signified. It was the teletype, an old Stock Market machine meant to give breaking news of stock trades, just the numbers, just the facts. It was sitting on Davenport’s desk; of the three of them, he was Captain Vintage, after all.

  Torin strolled over to the tickertape machine, stretched it out between his hands. “Yeah, this should do nicely to break in the new personas.”

  “I say we wait for a sign.”

  “What do you think running into our doppelgangers was the instant we decided to hop on a case?”

  “Okay, if you’re going to jump to conclusions, at least you’re leaping off the low hanging diving board this time. Let’s go,” she said, grabbing her trench coat.

  “You already have on your trench coat. That’s your doppelganger’s.”

  “Damn. You’d think they’d clean up after themselves.”

  “It’s another sign, making sure you don’t slip into the old you just when you need to slip into the new you.”

  “You’re good at reading in. Let’s hope not too good.”

  He followed her out of the office, glued to her ass as usual. The “as usual” part had him on pins and needles wondering if this latest best-way-to-transcend-themselves experiment had a chance in hell of working out. The transhuman era definitely put a huge premium on sustaining trans-ego states as part of the self-transcendence just to alleviate future, scratch that, present shock.

  “Let’s hope then that it was from this trans-egoic state that you and Kendra landed on the idea to ignore Clyde Barker, because to obsess on him is tantamount to being willingly recruited into victim-victimizer roleplay, and sucked into an alternate reality neither of you wants anything to do with,” he thought.

  ***

  Misha Soledad held out his hand in a calming gesture at the man pointing the laser gun at him. “What’s the matter, buddy? Having a bad day? Trust me, I know all about bad days.” He took his eyes off the mark to take in the wreckage. Just in time, apparently. Two skyscrapers collapsed into one another, holding themselves up as if a giant was just starting to stack dominoes as part of a game of solitaire he was playing with himself. The laser weapon in his perp’s hands must have undermined enough of the buildings’ supporting walls.

  So whatever this yahoo was, he wasn’t a total idiot.
A structural engineer was more like it.

  Soledad fixed his eyes on his mark for a second time. “If you’d like to throw your hat in the ring with the lot of urban planners, have at it, I say. I’m all about urban renewal.” Misha took out a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. “Don’t tell me. You’re one of those plant people for whom Vegetation City can never go far enough.” He threw a glance back at the buildings that were now leaning against one another as their only defense against gravity. “What, this is meant to lend the re-foresting theme to the city, like old trees rotting as part of the cycle of life?”

  “You’re pretty smart for a dummy.”

  “Thanks, I get that a lot.”

  “You don’t seem terribly concerned I have this gun aimed at you.”

  Misha laughed. “That’s because I always try to see the best in people. Take you, for instance. Took a real pro to bring down those two buildings. Can’t imagine wasting all that talent. So I say, rather than lock you up, why don’t we figure out how to make things right with these good people? Hey, they hire hackers after they break into secure security systems? Why can’t they hire structural engineers who bring down their buildings, huh? The logic seems sound to me, as sound as anything else that’s got to do with the ruling elite, anyway.”

  The guy’s face got all intense, suggesting he was giving the matter serious consideration. Finally, he lowered the gun. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Seriously. You aren’t going to give me a hard time? Come on, buddy, resist a little, or I’ll have to take a pay cut. They’ll think they’re paying me too much because my job really isn’t that hard.”

  The guy actually dropped the gun. Misha walked up to him, relieved him of the weapon, and cuffed his hands behind his back. “I was serious about resisting some more. I’m trying out for hostage negotiator. A lot of good you did me today.”

  He looked up in time to see Kendra and Torin walking towards them. “Why, if it’s not the prince and his princess. Relax, guys, I got this. I’m sure your talents could be better used elsewhere.”

  “Don’t you work for me?” Kendra said.

  Misha grimaced. “I applied for the hostage negotiator position today, not that this sorry putz gives a damn,” he said, shaking his perp. “I guess I’m not one to play second fiddle to your highnesses.”

  “If you’re bitter and arrogant, where will you go?” Torin asked. “Not everyone respects genius in its many splendored forms.”

  “I concede that I’m an acquired taste, but the last hostage negotiator got half the city blown up, so things are looking up for my kind. Turns out they don’t care how much of an ass I am just so I can pretend to be nice under fire, which, as it turns out, I do very well. Tell him, you inconsiderate perp, you,” he said, shaking the guy in his hand whose head was hanging down.

  “So you’re putting yourself under extreme duress to force yourself to be nice for short intervals,” Torin said. “That could work. Hey, we’re on a self-improvement kick.” He gestured to Kendra and himself. “If we’re going to be this in sync, maybe we should consider working together a while longer.”

  “What do you think, you inconsiderate shit?” Misha said, shaking the perp.

  “Will you stop manhandling him?” Kendra said. “You’re going to give him whiplash.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said, handing him over to the officer in his policeman blues. Okay to having the burden taken off his hands of Psycho Urban Renewer, anyway, not okay to working with Torin and Kendra a moment longer. Misha watched with a sense of pride as the policeman walked off with his collar. “What brings you two down here?” he said, shifting his attention back to Torin and Kendra. “I know it can’t be some shooter trying to level a city block with a child’s squirt gun. Forget that he actually pulled it off.”

  Fire trucks and firemen were busy getting into position, running into the now adjoining buildings, and dragging people out. Some injured parties didn’t just look shaken up, they looked positively dead.

  “Unlike you, Misha, we’ve evolved beyond proving how brilliant we are, and we’ve moved on to actually focusing on the people we’re supposed to be helping,” Torin said, a bit shaken by the procession of victims.

  “Hate to break it to you, Torin, but humanity went extinct some decades back. The only creatures walking around now are the monsters from their IDs. There isn’t anyone who isn’t shell-shocked by something or someone or just the times themselves. Shock people enough and the humanity is gone; just the monsters remain. You can put the monsters back in their cages, that’s all you can do. But if you do happen to find your humanity in this crazy undertaking of yours, let me know. I might give it a try. Pragmatist that I am, you’ll forgive me if I let you pioneer the jungle ahead of me.”

  “It’s an Age of Abundance, Misha,” Torin said. “There are still plenty of people focused on how good they suddenly have it.”

  “Yeah, right,” Soledad said, smacking his lips. “All the free time on their hands, nothing to do but dream up an even better future for themselves. Until they realize the amount of hard work involved. Just how many more upgrades they’re talking and how much more time. You separate a person from where he wants to be that much, it’s a formula for crushing depression, followed by psychoses. And out of Pandora’s box come flying the monsters again.”

  “Glass half full type, huh?” Kendra said.

  “Spare me the sarcasm, princess. I already have more than I know what to do with.”

  Torin gave him a two-finger salute as Misha walked off. “Smart ass. Do you remember our smart ass days, precious?”

  “I always rather liked Misha. If I relapse and fall off the wagon, you’ll know where to find me, humping gorgeous over there.”

  “I don’t know, I think I’m a lot prettier.”

  “He’s got that tough guy handsomeness, not the Palmolive hands prettiness you have going for you.”

  Torin did a mock check of his hands. Then grabbed her. “Come on, let’s go attend to why we came here before I get overheated over the wrong crime in progress.”

  “You’re taking us into the buildings that are in the process of falling down? There are people dying in there.”

  “We’re dying too, remember? Out of our old selves, anyway.”

  “I don’t know if I can be up close to this much tragedy at once, Torin. I get by by being hard as nails. If I go soft now…”

  “The sooner we realize our entire life is one big act, the sooner we can stop pretending it’s so hard to change. The only thing that’s hard is pretending to be someone else.”

  He steered her up a stairwell of one of the Kissing Towers, as he’d nicknamed the two skyscrapers leaning into one another domino style. The steps were made narrow by firemen and paramedics carting people down in stretchers, or running up with oxygen tanks on the other side of them. A couple times Torin and Kendra fell on the marble steps made slick by blood. Other times they had to fight to peel their feet off the ground, stuck as they were in coagulated blood, dust, and gore.

  Kendra coughed and pulled her jersey up to her nose. “I can’t breathe.”

  “All the better. The false you has gotten used to a certain level of oxygen. Too much or too little air all of a sudden ought to flush her out.”

  She was too preoccupied by not getting her high heels wedged in the eye sockets of the fallen bodies, or up a nostril or rectum to take him on anymore. They were holding on to one another like a snake that could only get over uneven terrain by stabilizing itself along its entire length. She kept grabbing oxygen refills from the firemen trudging up the stairs, yanking their air hoses and masks off of them to give herself a refresher. They received not one request by the firemen to head back down to street level and out of the building. The professional rescuers had their hands full with the people who they didn’t have to fight with to pull out of the skyscraper.

  Torin and Kendra had climbed four floors. It felt like forty. They managed a half flight more before the ground gave out unde
r them. All the prior sickening groans that were clear harbingers of impending doom were just teasing. When the end finally came, it was quiet, sudden, and unannounced.

  When Kendra and Torin came to, they were in a subterranean chamber, blocked from above, but with a yawning abyss staring up at them from below. Ignoring both their sudden appearance and the remodeling of his office, a man stared at a computer terminal, lost in thought. “So, it’s you,” Torin said.

  “Yes, it’s me,” the figure said without turning around. “You found me. Good on you. Though I never imagined you would.”

  Torin groaned and rubbed his sore butt. “Figured you’d be in the penthouse, actually. We were heading up when suddenly we were heading down.”

  “You two want to catch me up?” Kendra said. “A little back story to orient the concussed woman gasping for air?”

  “This is Petro Dolari,” Torin explained, “geo-engineer extraordinaire.”

  “I guess that explains the subterranean lair. He must have seen this coming.” Kendra gaped at the floors and floors beneath them, exposed by the recent tectonic shifts above.

  “That was another life,” Petro said.

  “What other life?” Kendra asked.

  “Petro Dolari, as in Petro dollars, as in oil money,” Torin explained. “He was hired originally to figure out how to keep the world in balance even as C02 emissions from oil refining, processing, and consuming was taking us into a new ice age, or the global greenhouse effect, or both, depending on who you were listening to.”

  “Let me guess, he was another one prone to hubris who fancied humans could do a better job of managing the environment than Mother Nature.”

  “Just the opposite, he argued it couldn’t be done. Certainly not with all the combined computational power then on Earth, for that matter, all the human power working in concert with their AIs. When others suggested quantum computing held the key, giving us infinite calculating ability, he begged to differ. He said complex systems reject any one player that is preventing themselves and, or all the others from evolving. That one player being us humans. It’s just in their nature. That sound about right, Petro?”