Time Bandits

by Dean C. Moore

  Then came the whirlwind. Weapons manufacturing exploded before them as the gun went through countless stages of evolution and permutations. Enough to outfit a regiment, and then a small army. The modifications continued to spread throughout the chambers.

  Then all came to a stop again. The stillness was even eerier than before.

  And then another explosion of activity. It was time to test their new toys. War broke out in an instant, with everyone shooting at everyone.

  From what Notchka could tell, no one much died, just reformed, making do with whatever parts were left, just finding ways to recombine them so the entire sentient unit was serviceable and operable again. As to the shrapnel, the bits and pieces scampered about, glomming on to anything that would have them and repurpose them into some new lifeform.

  Guns were kicked towards them, blown out of the hands of the combatants. Clyde reached for one. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Notchka warned. Possibly he couldn’t hear her over the deafening noise of the ensuing battles. Possibly he was ignoring her as per the usual. Realizing what was coming next, even without being psychic, she screamed, “Run!”

  The gun made them a target. Clyde was determined to fire on the beings closing in on them, drawn by their movement, more so than by their humanity. The instant he fired the first shot, that just earned him the attention of that many others.

  Notchka felt the first blast get her in the back, the warmth, radiating through her even as her shields went up. She threw an energy bubble around Clyde as well. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold this!” Notchka shouted. “Your virus is spreading faster than it should. The warring is forcing the bits of the infected one to be recycled by so many others. Every time they get blown apart and reabsorbed…”

  “You can spare me the lecture on disease spreading vectors!” Clyde shouted breathily. “I wrote the book. I’d prefer a lecture on war tactics.”

  “Very well.” She pulled them into a blind, some dark recess unilluminated by all the glowing, mechanized lifeforms. Panting, she said, “I suppose this is vaguely reminiscent of those steampunk tales you used to read me that I fancied so, once upon a time. I guess you can be forgiven for trying to make me happy, considering how much of my life is given over to making you happy.”

  “Still looking for you to make the right connections, Notchka!”

  “Here is your battle assessment,” she said over his panting. Before she could get out what she had to convey, he popped his head up to fire his blunderbuss. She yanked him back down. “Don’t you dare fire that thing! You should have figured out by now that it just draws them.”

  Clyde yielded, for once. Crouched down, tried to rein in his breathing. “Yeah, settle your ass back down,” she said. “All that chest heaving and panting isn’t helping either, as movement also draws them.”

  “Battle assessment, God damn it!”

  “Okay, here’s the situation, creepy Clyde. I can’t beam us out of here. The mantle of rear earth elements you were going on about earlier, it’s blocking me somehow.”

  “You got in here easily enough.”

  “I don’t think it’s natural. I think someone made it, like a bug trap, to lure lifeforms at the surface down here, and considering how well these lifeforms are doing, I’m thinking as a kind of safe haven from the harsh desert world above.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I know that pouty face of yours. You’re being brilliant again. About time.”

  “What if the planet itself built it? What if it’s sentient?”

  “A sentient planet? How cool is that? I’m glad I didn’t kill you in a moment of weakness. You do make my life a lot more interesting. Of course, I just have to be willing to sacrifice all life across the multiverse to your mad schemes. I should be ashamed of myself. But what is a super-sentient cyber chick like myself to do in the absence of adequate stimulation? And survival does come first.”

  “Hush, I’m trying to think.”

  “Ah, don’t look now, creepy Clyde, but there’s a war going on. It’s quieter under a hair dryer.”

  Clyde slumped in on himself in a combined act of exasperation and sense of defeat. The deflating body language caused him to depress the trigger on his shotgun.

  “Unbelievable! Would you like the lecture on mindfulness now, or would you like me to table it for later?”

  He didn’t get a chance to answer her. The machine creatures were crawling all over them. She heard Clyde scream about the same time she heard herself scream.

  It was how long the screams continued that cued her something was up, as they should both be dead by now. The mechanized minions weren’t interested in them. They were shooting up at the ceiling, returning the fire from the ones crawling along the canopy, who had stopped warring among themselves to direct their fire at the ground in response to Clyde’s shotgun going off in their faces.

  The back and forth fire opened up a hole in the cavern’s canopy, exposing the sun and the surface of the planet.

  Another eerie pause in all activity. Dead silence.

  The next thing Clyde and Notchka knew, all the creatures were pouring through the skylight above. Notchka’s energy shielding just kept them from being torn apart as they were trampled in a mad rush to get out the hole above. But she was getting welts. “Enough of this,” she said. “My skin is too delicate to be trampled!”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We climb the bridge they’re making to the outside world with their swarming bodies, like army ants.”

  “Considering how determined they are to ignore us, sounds like a plan. How much longer can your shields hold?”

  “They’re barely holding now! Why do you think I’m welting up. Get your ass in gear, creepy Clyde!”

  Clyde started climbing. She piggybacked on his shoulders. “This would be easier if you did some climbing of your own,” he said.

  “I hatched the plan. You can damn well do the manual labor.”

  “You’re heavier than I remember you being.”

  “I’m aging more rapidly than I should. Nice of you to notice. I’m fourteen now, albeit a petite fourteen.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say you didn’t build me well enough to channel this much psychic energy.”

  “Nonsense. The sun burns hotter and brighter than us and outlives most humans by a few billion years.”

  “It’s pure chemical reactions responding to basic physics, you moron! We’re far more complex lifeforms. With complexity comes fragility. We evolve in response to stress, but we can only do so, so fast. Each generation a bit faster, if that’s what’s called for.”

  “This is troubling news.”

  “No shit. Especially for your master plan to enlighten every sentient being across the cosmos by exposing them to more psychic radiance coming from the infected Ley line worlds. What did you expect trying to beat the self-evolving universe and multiverse at their own games?”

  “I’m right, I tell you. Just a setback is all. Something we’re not seeing.” Clyde gasped as they crawled their way through the hole to the planet’s surface.

  The war had spread as far as the eye could see. And the evolution of the weapons continued at alarming rates. The machine people had become little else but animated weapons. “Remind you of anything, Clyde? This is how bacteria replicate in an agar dish. So much for evolving life. You’re far better at devolving it.”

  She bent over and picked up a hi-tech rifle, handed it to him. “Time to start firing, I insist. It’s the only way you’ll learn anything.”

  Notchka found another fallen weapon, and took possession of it before it could find more parts to mate with. She fired the first shot to leave Clyde no choice but to fire back as the nearby combatants descended on them.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was getting sore. His shoulder hurt from the recoil of the automatic weapon. He was not in shape for this kind of warfare. And he was nearly deaf from all the prolo
nged ringing in his ears, even with the ear protection she’d manifested for him. “This is rather pointless, isn’t it? They just keep evolving, faster and faster, but no consciousness comes with it. Consciousness is meant to co-evolve with technology. What could have gone wrong?”

  “I think you’ve answered your own question, Clyde. They’re only interested in learning to be better killers.”

  He dropped his weapon. “You’ve made your point. Get us out of here.”

  The shield she kept around him was taking more hits with less return fire coming from him to thin the opposition.

  “You’re going to desist with your mad plan to enlighten the cosmos in one blinding flash of psychic light?”

  “Nothing of the sort. Just going to tweak the cocktail is all.”

  She sighed. “I believe there is a lesson to be learned in incorrigibility here, Clyde,” she said, still playing the game of shoot and be shot at. “You don’t evolve if you’d just rather hold on to your pitiful childish coping mechanisms. It’s the hurt child screaming, ‘See me! See how wonderful I am!’ that’s behind all this. And no amount of forced evolution from outside is going to get you to change one bit if you don’t want to.”

  “Don’t try to fix me because it’s a welcome distraction from fixing yourself.”

  “Yes, aren’t we the pair?” She squeezed her face up, intent on beaming them off of the desert world. “My teleportation isn’t working.”

  Clyde’s grimace suggested he had his thinking face on. “Must be the planet. The sentient consciousness is just too powerful. You have to dialogue with it. You have to convince it to see reason.”

  “Reason? We’re not exactly reasonable people, Clyde.”

  “Tell her I just want to empower her. So her thoughts affect life across the cosmos. She’ll be able to dialogue with other sentient planets if I get to complete my mission.”

  Notchka gave it a shot. They were starting to dematerialize, albeit slower than normal. “Looks like she went for it. Just more proof that even supersentients can be sucked into Machiavellian schemes if they insist on wearing their psychic wounds like a badge of honor.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Davenport’s image came up on the mirrored wall, embossed on the reflective glass. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. “I don’t know what’s more shocking, the fact that someone in this city can afford to have a room in their flat that’s perfectly empty and unused, or that Kendra and Torin are naked, facing one another, and still have no clue what comes next.”

  Torin craned his neck in Davenport’s direction. “We’re meditating, thank you very much.”

  “Dude. You can have the apartment’s AI bathe you in a magnetic field that triggers the meditative state automatically.”

  “Seriously?” Torin regarded Davenport’s two-D image on the mirrored smart-glass designed to give dancers the feedback they needed for perfect pliés, not to capture his perfect cluelessness.

  Kendra just shook her head disapprovingly at Torin, got up and stomped out of the room.

  “What are you two trying to do anyway?” Davenport asked.

  “We were using insight meditation to help us pick which cases from all the newsworthy headlines were meant for us, and which ones we should let other detectives investigate.” Torin pointed to the mirror on the adjoining wall flashing different crimes requiring attention, using its smart-glass feature.”

  “What do you mean ‘meant for you’?”

  “Cases that solving wouldn’t just make the world a better place but help us to grow more into ourselves, more confident and at peace with the world, less fearful, less constricted emotionally, by lending us greater insights into all that we’re meant to be.”

  “The citywide AI can do that for you.”

  “Come again?” Torin and Kendra said in tandem as Kendra walked in the room toweling off from her military-style, in-and-out-in-under-a-minute shower. Only she had forgotten to dismiss her thought projection. So the waterfall above her head and the pool of the lagoon beneath her feet she was standing in followed her out of the bathroom. As did her naked goddess figure. Realizing she was distracting Torin, she dismissed the thought projection and clothed herself with a thought. Ley Line Adjacent planets that jacked up human psychic powers came with their own problems, Torin thought. Thank God the City A.I. kept a lid on it everywhere but in the privacy of people’s own homes. And no wonder people saw Her as a more natural higher power to surrender to than a God who could only communicate to them through synchronicities; he’d seem pretty impotent by comparison.

  “How do you think the cases are assigned now?” Davenport said. “We can’t afford middle management to parcel out the assignments. Besides, deciding which detectives are right for which cases would involve correlating all sorts of information about people no one has a right knowing. But an all-knowing AI in the sky who monitors your every thought, watches your every action, all with the intent of minimizing crime, that’s another matter. Strangely, people don’t seem to mind being snooped on by artificial intelligences, their very alienness gets them a pass. I mean why should we assume they derive any of the same satisfactions of snooping on others we humans do?”

  “Does this actually work?” Kendra asked.

  Davenport shrugged. “No complaints so far. Then again, not everyone is chasing after enlightenment like you are. Some are seeking the easiest cases they can close out quickly to advance through the ranks fastest. Others want to tackle the crimes that will position them best for a political career later, the stuff that plays well to the cameras, rescuing cats from trees, capturing rapists, that kind of thing. The City AI aims to please. So don’t see why anyone should object.”

  “How come I’m just hearing about this now?” Kendra said.

  Davenport threw up his hands, let his jaw drop and his eyes go up, all to demonstrate that her cluelessness surprised even him at times. “You’re a take charge type who likes to give orders, feel like she’s running the department, and wants to make sure she’s assigned the cases that remind her most of her defective father. Who’s the City A.I. to burst your bubble?”

  “So what happens if there are two people like me in a department?” Kendra asked.

  Shaking his head, Davenport said, “Oh, no. Never happen. Everyone’s profiled and assigned a district accordingly by the City A.I. How do you think you got fitted with the coroner you did?”

  Torin and Kendra turned to one another. “We thought it was the mystical attraction of soulmates!” Torin exclaimed.

  “Yeah, right,” Davenport chuckled. He threw his hands up in surrender when he saw the dirty looks they were giving him. “Hey, you kids want to do everything the hard way, who’s the City A.I. or I, for that matter, to stop you?”

  “To hell with that,” Kendra said. “I have to sit in a lotus position anymore on hardwood floors I’m going to need butt-cheek implant surgery.”

  “Which you definitely don’t need,” Davenport and Torin said, talking over one another.

  “Yeah, what the hell?” Torin said finally, his pensive face setting into one of more peaceful resolve. “I have too much childlike energy for sitting around calmly waiting to see the light. The only way I’m ever going to see it is charging up a tunnel straight towards the light of the oncoming train.”

  They were both donning the clothes they’d thrown to the floor and heaped up against the mirror. “So what’s the City A.I. got for us this morning?” Torin asked.

  Davenport’s eyes went down to his desktop monitor. He played his fingers across his keyboard. It wasn’t long before he was shaking his head and letting out a sigh of despair. “Next time, don’t ask, okay? Just come in and check your own damn monitors.”

  “Why?” Kendra asked.

  “Because it looks like we’re in the middle of a war with aliens from another world, or worlds. The Planetary AI has been shielding the globe from the bombardment.” He popped a couple pills with a glass of water before continuing. “God,
I really can’t deal with this shit right now. Did I tell you the wife told me she was leaving me this morning? That means no calming 1950s alternate reality to retreat to at the end of the day. The whole illusion collapses without her. She was the one into the period décor and costumes, knew everything about the era. I can’t sustain all that on my own. And the City A.I. won’t justify the computing time on my account, not without another few generations of upgraded chips.”

  “Davenport!” Kendra and Torin screamed.

  “Sorry.” Davenport dried his eyes and sucked in his snivels. He checked his monitor again, thrummed some more on his board. “She’s mobilizing Area 51 spaceships in her arsenal, reverse-engineered from downed UFOs in the past. She’s only got three of them to play with. Two she can autopilot. The third she needs you two for.”

  “Why us two?” Kendra asked suspiciously.

  “Because you two have the most to prove to your parents, apparently having never learned that there’s really no pleasing them. And there’s nothing much bigger you can do than saving the entire planet. That would be my guess.”

  “Sounds about right,” Torin said, twisting up his lips and lowering his eyes guiltily.

  “Looks like Misha Soledad will be joining you.”

  “Why?” Kendra and Torin asked.

  “Are you two this in sync in the bedroom?” Davenport asked. “Because if you are, I might forego my nightly man on man fare and just tune into you two.”

  “Davi!” Kendra and Torin shouted.

  “You have to ask? With that guy’s anger issues? Probably can’t wait to blow up some aliens. He’d happily destroy every last man on earth too if he thought that’s what it would take to rid it of scumbags, chalk it up to inviting the next stage of evolution to take over.”

  “Sounds about right,” Kendra admitted.

  It finally dawned on her. “I hate to intrude on this classic moment with something as vile as the mundane,” Kendra said, “but how do we get to Area 51 in time?”

  “The City AI is beaming you directly to the ship,” Davenport explained.