Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  Torin gulped. It was suddenly all very clear. How could the old man be anything but right? He’d based his relationship with Kendra on just this balance of opposites. The fact that the extremes in one another’s natures helped to correct for one another’s blind-sightedness. The very same gift that had been his birthright he’d rejected. For once he felt ashamed. Maybe if he hadn’t retreated into his mind the instant he shut his heart to them, as a safe refuge from the heartlessness he perceived in their relationship, he’d have had the mind power to see the truth for himself. But with his heart severed from his mind he couldn’t see the truth; neither his heart nor his mind which swelled in the union of one another’s embrace was big enough anymore.

  “Maybe it is time we opened the gift God gave us,” Torin said in a more conciliatory manner. “That may take more tomorrows than either of you have left in you, for which I apologize. Because you’re right. I see now that I had my role to play in this little drama and I kept flubbing my lines. But right now we have a bigger problem that overshadows us all. Maybe if I can deal effectively with that, I can make some time for us.”

  He turned his back on them and went in search of his daughter. She would no doubt be with the aliens, giving them a piece of her mind. It was curious that so far, he hadn’t seen any. He and Kendra had had little success with reining Notchka in before, until after the tantrum was over. A tantrum this time was rather out of the question.

  ***

  Before Torin could get too far, Kendra materialized before him, solidifying slowly from a lightshow of sparkles. “I guess our daughter sensed we’d worked out some of our issues,” she said.

  “That’s putting it generously. Anything?” He gestured to the moon trapped in the intersecting tractor beams.

  “Yeah. Dad’s got it under control.”

  “Seriously? The guy I wouldn’t trust to fix my car?”

  “I’ll have you know, stoned or not, not that I’ve ever experienced ‘not,’ he’s one hell of a mechanic.”

  “Let me guess, there’s no end-of-world scenario that the pothead hasn’t considered.”

  “He confessed, this one slipped by him.”

  “Seen any aliens?” he asked.

  “Not a one.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “If I had to guess…”

  “No, if you had to be psychic?”

  He sighed. “It’s set to autodestruct if someone, anyone tampers with it.”

  “A ship this size could take out more than that moon.”

  “Sweetheart?” Kendra said to the stars. “Mommy and daddy need to talk to you.”

  “You think she’s listening?”

  “She’s a teenager. Eavesdropping is the one thing that trumps interacting with aliens.”

  They materialized forthwith before their daughter. “It’s a ghost ship,” Notchka said. “Heck, it’s a veritable Bermuda triangle that swallows ghost ships, moons, and all else.”

  “We think if we mess with it,” Torin said, “it will self-destruct, taking the moon and the Earth with it, explaining why we haven’t seen any aliens.”

  “Duh. Sadly this outfit is not rated for hellacious explosions,” Notchka said, parting her hair with a pensive, plotting, pernicious face.

  “Don’t do anything rash,” Torin coaxed.

  “Me? Shouldn’t we be worried about the pothead dicking around in the engine room?”

  “In this family we use polite euphemisms when referring to your grandfather,” Kendra said.

  “You have a polite euphemism for ‘We’re royally screwed’?” Notchka asked.

  “Such a potty mouth. I remember when you could mess with the entire multiverse, and not one swear word.” Kendra wiped the lipstick that had smeared on her daughter’s lips. “The lipstick with that outfit makes you look cheap.”

  “Ladies. Could we stay focused on preventing any post-apocalyptic scenarios?” Torin implored. He clasped his daughter’s right shoulder. “Why don’t you take us to your grandfather?”

  “Off with you. I’m going to go spend time with the addle in-laws. Until further notice they seem to have the best formula of all for dealing with this situation.”

  Torin noticed he and Kendra were dematerializing.

  ***

  “Hello, you senile lovelies. Been thinking of you. Well, not really, but now that I’m here, you can enjoy me in all my splendor, which is good enough.” Notchka hit them with the big toothy smile.

  “There she is!” grandma exclaimed, ruffling her hair. “Your grandfather says it’s the end of the world and we’ve been given the best seats in the house. Isn’t that kind of God?”

  “I think kind would be canceling the apocalypse, grandma,” Notchka said.

  “It’s not for us to question His wisdom, sweetheart.” Grandpa straightened her collar. “Though I’m embarrassed to say I was one of the ones who rejected the ‘Christ was an alien’ hypothesis. I feel so ashamed.” He set his eyes on taking in the ship with the awe and reverence this latest symbol of the son of God deserved. Regarding the ring more closely, Notchka had to admit, it did resemble a crown of thorns.

  Notchka shook her head slowly and bit her lip. “I’m ashamed to say I thought I could find a performance on my holo-TV more entertaining than you two.”

  “Where are you parents, sweetie?” grandpa said.

  “Trying to put an end to the end of the world.”

  Grandpa clamped down on his jaw, holding on to a gruff face, only, etching it now with greater sternness. “I tried to show him the way. Such an incorrigible lad. He’ll pay for that in so many lifetimes stuck in purgatory realms. Leastways, I hope God goes easy on him and doesn’t send him straight to hell. Surely Torin means well. But some people can only find their way to God by taking the long way around.”

  “I’ll ignore the irony, considering the source,” Notchka said, admiring herself in her compact mirror. “All this preparation, and not one alien. There’s just no justice even in end of the world scenarios.”

  Grandpa cracked along his spine as he bent over and spanked her on her bottom. “I just saved you spending time in one of those purgatory worlds, providing you can now grasp the shame of your comments.”

  Notchka stretched a disingenuous smile across her face the same way she painted her lips with lipstick, with concerted effort. “Thanks for helping me to keep it real, grandpa.”

  ***

  “Dad,” Kendra said. “We have a small hitch. The ship is set to self-destruct if anyone tampers with it.”

  Her father stood up from the floor and beheld the engine lying in parts around him. “Whoever said ‘better late than never’ didn’t get a load of this family.”

  “I don’t understand,” Torin said, gawking at the shrapnel. “How come we aren’t toast?”

  “It’s just an air-conditioning unit,” her father explained. “Before you can make a really big mess of things, you have to make a small mess of things. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

  She glowered at him.

  “The best way I can figure to do this,” Torin said, “is to kill the tractor beams at the same moment we beam the ship out of our solar system, beam the moon back to where it belongs, and ourselves back to Earth.”

  Her father took a deep breath and let it out. “Is that child really that powerful?”

  “I don’t know,” Torin confessed. “So far she’s just moved herself and one or two people across time and space.”

  “You never did explain how she does that,” her father said, searching Torin’s face for clues.

  Torin sighed. “Clyde Barker genetically engineered her to have a stronger connection to her energy body than the rest of us, or we’d all be able to do this. Anyway, with a little more training in psycho-biology and a lifetime dedicated to the task, barring similar child prodigy potential.”

  “You’re the master at multitasking,” Kendra said, staring at Torin. “If Notchka links to your mind, allowing you to handle the coor
dination…”

  “She can concentrate on just channeling her power,” Torin said, finishing her thought for her. “She’ll need to link to your father’s mind to understand what to do about the engines.”

  “She’ll need to link me to the engine schematics first, uhm, the relevant engine in this instance, and give me some time to intuit what to do,” her father said.

  “I’m not sure we have time.” Torin scratched the back of his head furiously to promote more blood flow to his brain.

  “Why?” her father asked.

  “It’s possible this isn’t an attack at all. That the ship is simply programmed to search after moons of a certain specific type, hollow like our moon, and so, easy to transport, comprised of a certain mineral ore mix. This may be no more than a mining ship. And once it’s free of the Earth’s gravitational pull, it may have the spare energy it needs to teleport it out of here to some place where I won’t have the coordinates, or any sense of how to get us back.”

  “Why the self-destruct mechanism then?” Kendra asked.

  “Possibly just a safety feature in case the ship makes a mistake and snags some really pissed off and intelligent alien lifeforms like us, advanced enough to not take too kindly to being harvested against their will and to do something about it.”

  “Could that be why you didn’t sense anything back on earth when you psychically reached out to the ship?” Kendra asked.

  “I still don’t sense any evil intent. If this were a doomsday device, I’d be able to tell that much, if nothing else.”

  “Then I suggest we get a move on,” her father said. “That’s a lot of multitasking, even for you, son. Sure you can handle it?”

  Torin’s face betrayed his reassuring smile. “We’re all being tasked to do more than we’re able.”

  “All except for me,” Kendra said.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Her father coughed on his own pot smoke. “For you to stand by and do nothing and feel entirely impotent… you’re certainly not hotwired for that. Think you can handle it?”

  She smiled despite herself. “Why don’t I be the heart connection for the rest of you?”

  Her father made a sour face. “Seems a bit sexist. Traditional 20th century female role play seems so beneath you.”

  Ignoring him, she turned to Torin. “You sensing your cue, multitasker?”

  Torin nodded. Not as confident as she’d like.

  Her father took a step back in anticipation of what was coming next. In so doing, he unwittingly capsized the laser pen from its perch that he’d borrowed from the sleeping robot earlier. It fell with a clang and the robot stirred.

  And then it stood.

  And then it looked real mean and pissed off.

  And then it brought its hands up, its “fix it” tool appendages looking suddenly like rather effective weapons in this new context.

  And then it took a menacing step towards them.

  And another.

  Kendra and her dad turned to Torin and said at the same time, “Not to rush you.”

  Torin’s face morphed, exposing that increasingly hyper-focused concentration that was his moving into the eye of the tornado, into the one pointed mind that also allowed him to coordinate so many other things hurling about him in the outer wall of the tornado. Hopefully there would be no room in that state to entertain the self-doubts as well; possibly, just possibly those states were mutually exclusive.

  She must have guessed right because the next thing she knew she was standing on terra firma staring up at a daytime sky across which it was possible to see what looked like a sun going supernova. “How is it we can see that explosion if you teleported that ship out of our solar system?”

  “I factored in for a little extra drama,” Torin said, then leaned into her, “for the old folks’ sake.” They turned to take in the three elders looking up at the sky with a sense of satisfaction.

  “The sky’s all aflame,” Torin’s mother said. “Isn’t it lovely?”

  “Better than 4th of July fireworks, sweetie,” his father said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Now that that tiresome ordeal is over, we can get on with solving the Cotton Candy Crime of the Century,” Notchka said, entirely focused on the gruesome scene before them of the collapsed Octopus ride, the cars on their side, doors opened, dead bodies prostrate everywhere.

  “You didn’t have to handle the multitasking this well,” Kendra whispered in Torin’s ear.

  “I figured she could use some R&R before the real showdown.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You didn’t think retrieving the moon was any big deal vis-à-vis the bigger picture did you?”

  “I’m frightened to ask.”

  “We’re going to have to have our showdown with Clyde Barker and ‘Bad Notchka.’ Hope our good Notchka will be enough to put an end to both of them. Otherwise we’re in for a life-altering event even more dramatic than the loss of our moon.”

  Kendra glared at him as if he were mad. “Oh no.”

  “What’s the use of healing our emotional hurts with our parents if we don’t use the freed up mind power to do what’s right?”

  “I just paid my first installment on that healing plan, thank you very much. I’m still mortgaged to the tits on it.”

  “We’re not reneging on our duties.”

  Kendra inhaled deeply and held the air like a balloon, half hoping the extra volume in her lungs would lift her off the ground and away from his needling insights. “Fine, you want me to cash in on that self-growth equity, here it is. We’re going to leave that move on the chessboard to some version of ourselves in some parallel universe far more up to the task.”

  Torin pondered the point. “I suppose you might be on to something. If my theories about the Ley lines coursing through the universe are correct, then the version of ourselves on a planet more closely allied to those Ley lines will be far more strategically placed to make the most of that showdown. What they do there will affect all of the timelines, not just one. They could settle the matter once and for all. Otherwise, who knows if there are enough showdowns between the various parallel universe versions of ourselves and Clyde Barker in all the multiverse to settle the matter?”

  “It’s settled then?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Thank God for a little extra mind power, huh?” she said, trying not to feel too relieved she’d managed to shirk arguably the greatest responsibility of her life.

  “Yes, I suppose we can put our minds on the latest case before us without too much guilt.” He sighed. “I remember when the sight of a mass murder wasn’t quite so calming, or family-friendly looking.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kendra and Notchka said absently in tandem, eyes glued to the grim sight of guts and gore.

  “I better get to interviewing that AI,” Kendra said.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Notchka declared. “I’m the chief investigator on this case. You can see what evidence can be derived from combing over the dead bodies. Save me all kinds of nightmares later.” She turned her back on the dead bodies and walked herself to the edge of the circle, where the AI was standing, no longer connected to the ride, looking like a washing machine standing on four spindly legs.

  Torin decided he’d tag along with his daughter. “All right, you, spill,” Notchka said, her digital scratchpad in hand, though she was recording with it to save her hands for gesturing. “Wait a second,” she said, holding up her hand to arrest the torrent of words she expected to come spilling out of the AI. She turned to her father. “You sure you’re up for this? I mean we just saved the world from one hellacious apocalypse. I forget it takes you older types longer to rebound.”

  Torin smiled. It was a pained smile. He was developing the same repertoire for smiles he had for whistles, all on account of his daughter. “I’m more afraid I’ll cease to be deep and meaningful if I don’t have sufficient time to ruminate at length on all the implications of these individual crimes against
humanity. If I descend into the land of the superficial as a result, it really will be like becoming fourteen all over again.”

  “Ever seen a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade? Now we’re talking crass and commercial, an entire country reduced to the superficial marketing hype of the one percenters peddling their wares. And in a post-apocalypse economy, no less. How droll. As if a rusted-to-hell Coney Island with one ride breaking down after another weren’t enough of an affront against my childish sensibilities. Let’s face it, Dad, keeping things superficial is what it means to be American. They may not have intended it, but the one percenters prepared us to deal with the here and now better than anybody. Now that we’re into an Age of Abundance, time is just one endless, crass, mind-blowing affair, and no one is better prepared to deal with it.”

  “Or more conditioned to sleepwalk through it. Seems our struggle to awaken into a meaningful life is only beginning, and is likely to be harder than ever. In a world where anything goes, does anything really matter?”

  “Not now, Dad. Really? In the middle of the investigation into the Cotton Candy Crime of the Century?”

  “Sorry, dear. I’ll wait until you need disciplining. That will be your penance, to give your life some meaning.”

  “You of all people should know, Dad, if your mind is constantly blown, self-limiting concepts don’t get a chance to stick. So you are free to be anything you want to be for the first time ever. Like a Phoenix standing in the fire, remaking itself from one instant to the next. It’s not technology that will deliver us. Not democracy. But our inability to hold on to any world view that actually makes sense of it all. Our inability to forge a fixed identity that can stand up to the assault. The whole thing is really very Zen.”

  “Is that one of my speeches you memorized to shut me up by sounding like a chip off the old block?”

  She sighed and shifted her attention to the AI. “All right you. You wanted the world’s attention. Well, here I am? My web channel is the most popular on the internet. Try getting this kind of exposure with the primetime news feeds, I dare you.”