by Grant Fausey
“But I must say,” he continued. “We’re all quite impressed with your work, Doctor Rex.”
“Its just Rex.”
“Oh––” Jacob made a mental note of it for his tombstone. “My mistake. I hear the first prototypes you created are already in service.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“However, it seems your Kane model needs a little work.”
“It was rushed into service, before all the bugs were worked out.” The scientist widened his pace. Jacob hurried to catch up to the obstinate twit, but was having a hard time of it. Nevertheless, it would be over soon.
“It’s quite unpredictable, you know?” It wasn’t a question. Jacob was just restating the facts.
“So what’s the gig?” asked the scientist. “Why bring me half way across the Triad to this god-forsaken, backwater place to talk about kinks in production?”
“Oh––” answered Jacob, welcoming the surprise, a gleam in his eye. “I’m not the one who requested your presence.” There was. “I’m just the lonely courier sent to collect you. Something about your temperament, I believe.” Rex glanced back at the messenger displeased, wondering what he had gotten himself into. “You’ll find out more if you arrive,” insisted Jacob. “I mean when you arrive, of course.”
The attendant corrected himself rather quickly, as not to alarm the braggart. A black hover limo pulled up almost on cue, as lavishly polished as a coffin. Jacob reached for the handle and opened the door. “Awe––” There was a smile. “Here’s your ride now.” The scientist hesitated, stared at the pitch-black interior, as if the grim-reaper awaited him inside the flying automobile. “He’s on his way,” said Jacob nonchalantly, as he closed the door behind the scientist. “No––” he continued. “You can dismiss the driver and return the limo to the motor pool by all means.”
A smile crossed his face as he slipped a hard candy from his pocket and popped it in his mouth, his ghostly appearance that of a holographic projection. “And please …” he said with a new found sense of pride, “dispose of him as soon as he’s completed the task.”
Reuben Taylor walked up to the holographic projection, and stood in the commons waiting for him to finish before entering the Assembly building. “It’s done,” said Mantel. The hologram fluttered.
“Good,” remarked the good Senator. “That’s one lose end we won’t have to tie-up.”
“Then we should proceed with phase two.”
“By all means.” Taylor nodded in agreement. “The earlier we close this deal … the sooner we can eliminate the others involvement.”
“Then I’ll see you on the other side.” The big man tipped his head, as if he was offering him a good journey.
“Good hunting.”
The senator parted ways with a slight wave of his hand, and entered the Assembly Hall. Jacob Mantel simply phased out of existence, while on the other hand, Trinod Rex, fearing for his life, began a frenzied attempt to exit the limo, only to find his mind overwhelmed with the thoughts of his own death. He knew he was witnessing his own demise. Perhaps, living through the last moments of one universe, while the promise of extended life in another quickly diminished. He was helpless and simply out of options to save even himself: The arrogant twit did have one redeeming quality though; he was a clone.
SIXTEEN: Islands in the Sky
• • •
Salnex waited at the end of the wharf, just above where Jake and Krydal encountered the watery apparition from the future. He wasn’t visible to either of them, but he was there, big as life. Three hundred fifty pounds of blubber, limited only by his perception of both time and space; the parallel cosmos was undetectable to him as well. Yet, he was anything but alone. “I’m sure I’m no expert on interstellar commerce,” he told the Baroness, Ralstar Malone, breathing on his fingers, with cupped hands in order to keep them warm. “But if you see profit in it then who am I to stand in the way of progress?”
Ralstar Malone smiled, but didn’t respond. The baroness knew she was being taken for a ride. Salnex wasn’t giving her room to maneuver. He was a shrewd businessman. Nevertheless, negotiations continued as if she was unaware of the technocrat’s infidelity. “My fees are quite firm, you know,” continued the fuzzy little man. “It’s going to take more than a few trinkets to buy Manhattan this time.”
The baroness chuckled, delighted by the consistency of his thievery. He was petty and arrogant for a dead man. She would only have put up with his shenanigans for so long; the time would come for the tables to turn, then she would no longer have to run interference for the braggart. Salnex grinned, of course, anything to drive up the price. “Never send a man to his clone’s funeral, that’s what I say! You both live longer.”
“If he’s wrong,” said the Baroness,” you can keep the islands for yourself. Turn it into a golf course, if you like.”
“No assurances, huh Malone?” He half expected a shudder out of the old woman, but got nothing. After all, she was Ralstar Malone, an industrial baroness worth millions, if not billions.
“If this goes wrong,” he told the baroness, “there won’t be enough left of us to clone.”
Christopher Denarak stepped out of the shadows, waiting at the other end of the pier. Salnex sobered. “Are you sure about this?” asked the symbiont. “We’re vulnerable here.”
“Not to worry,” said the thrifty young man, reassuring her. He was older now, more a man of world than before. She knew Christopher would do everything in his power to protect her. Still, the precious companion Grathamar had bestowed upon him as his young apprentice, now worried him. They were inseparable now.
“What aren’t you telling me, Kristic?” asked the symbiont.
“We’re anything but vulnerable I promise you that.”
Ralstar Malone motioned for Christopher to join her. “Here we go,” said the young man, putting on a happy facade, as he started toward them. Nilana relaxed; he obviously had something up his sleeve, but wasn’t sharing his plan. Nevertheless, the symbiont could sense danger.
“This can’t be good,” said Christopher. There was fear in the old woman’s eyes. Someone else was there; a faint image, a ghost visible only in the corner of his eye.
“So you see,” said the Baroness, “if there’s a profit to be made, Christopher will find it!” And with that, the negotiations ended. But Christopher didn’t hear anything, not even the deal on the table. The entrepreneur wasn’t really saying anything, except, maybe, his own brand of gibberish.
“Me and my boys are up for a little snatch and grab, if you know what I mean?”
Christopher rejected the offer immediately. The fuzzy little peach colored man was anything but trustworthy. He was considered a risk in most of the high circles, yet he had great influence in the Assembly. It was very peculiar, but something Christopher would leave to later investigation.
“Not exactly what I had in mind!” said the youth. He had no intension of getting his hands dirty. Especially, now that the hands had been dealt. Besides, Salnex was lowlife. Even Nilana couldn’t stand the smell of him.
“Now boys,” insisted Ralstar Malone, covering her own ass. “I’m sure you’re all welcome to pillage and plunder all you want … just so long as we find out what happened to Kristic’s little old mentor, Grathamar Craton. Isn’t that right, Christopher?” Christopher glared at the baroness. He knew a bad deal when he heard it, and this was a bad deal. “I’m sure we’ll all stay in line.”
“Good––” said Salnex. “Then we have a deal Baroness.” The fuzzy little man extended his paw like a vine to seal the deal, but Christopher balked, cautious to shake hands with the technocrat. “I say we set sail the day after tomorrow,” said the entrepreneur. “Two days out … two days back … excluding, of course, time for sightseeing.”
“The day after tomorrow then,” agreed the Baroness. Salnex smiled a little rat-faced grin and took his place at the rear of the group.
“I’ll inform the Assembly of our litt
le endeavor,” said the Baroness. “Make sure all the paper work is in order.
“Salnex agreed, “That’s fine. We want this all to be legitimate.”
Christopher stopped. Waited. Salnex followed his new partners to the other end of the pier. There was that old feeling again. They were being watched. Yet, there was no one else on the dock. Not so much as a whisper echoed from the waterfront. Someone else was there, but damned near invisible; he might as well been a ghost. Christopher just couldn’t see him, and he wasn’t sure Nilana could either. The pilothouse made the perfect cover; it was close to the harbor, situated along the lower end of the pier. Someone dressed completely in black would be virtually invisible. Whoever the man was, he had skills; unless, of course, he was a woman. There was every possibility a woman was tracking them. But unlikely, the footsteps on the boardwalk were heavy, but absolutely silent. There was a forth individual trailing them, most likely a bounty hunter like Indigo.
Samuel Nomad peeked around the side of the building, ducked back into the darkness just as quickly. A light swept across the outrigger, millimeters from where he stood hidden in plain sight. “One for extraction,” he whispered, slipping across the pylon undetected. The temporal agent was alone, and unnoticed, until now. No one considered the possibility of his existence until he stepped to the edge of the boathouse for safety. The bounty hunter turned around, eyed the sleek, yellowish submersible as it rose from the depths against the moonlit water, and floated majestically, absolutely silent in the wake of the crashing waves. It was as if it didn’t exist at all, but was rather an aberration of some previous endeavor. Nomad closed the hatch. A moment later, the craft spiraled back into the depths, silently accelerating into oblivion, until it vanished into the murky complexity of the Pacific.
SEVENTEEN: Tether Lines
• • •
There were as many off-worlders hitching a ride on the tour route as there were patrons paying for staterooms on the commercial freight lines. The great halls of the Assembly were just as visible from the loading docks outside the freighter depot, as they were from the courtyards outside the New Los Angeles Transit Hub. The interior of the hanger, comparatively speaking, was as modest an operation as Jake’s bossy copilot, Rooka Trent, could handle. The resident mechanic had toolboxes everywhere. There was even a mechanic’s cart tucked tight alongside the forward engine compartment, not that it needed to be there. Rooka just liked having it around. The rodent liked having stuff available. Especially, when he was under the cowling, like he was today. The number four wave-generator attached to the engine was in need of refurbishing, and Vex Redford was beside him, covered in grease, trying to make up for lost time. The moment Krydal walked in, however, the dispatcher ducked under the cowling and came up in the avionics compartment next to his wild-eyed lab rat of a mechanic.
“Here you go,” said Vex. The star jockey handed him a hydro-spanner with the replacement part already on the tip. “Better keep an eye on number four,” added the dispatcher. “We’ll pull the housing and replace the buffers when you get back.”
“Gamy, Vex,” said the rodent, impolitely. “This bucket of bolts needs a major overhaul. The main sails have more wholes in them than Swiss cheese, and the couplers … well––I don’t think I’d trust more than four or five pods. More than that, and I can’t guarantee she’ll hold together.”
“Better take the Chariot.” Vex glaring at the rodent. “You’ll probably need it.”
“Right!” agreed Rooka, adding an extra tie-down or two was safety for safety’s sake. But more important, it was a good idea. He had no way of knowing the gravity of the situation. Sodin altered size and shape on a daily basis, according to some astronomers in weaved in and out of history, as if it existed then didn’t. “Never can tell what you might run into out there,” he told the dispatcher.
“Oh––” Vex poked his head out from under the cowling and smiled, “Hello there.”
Vex reached out with a grease-covered hand, only to pull it back. “Krydal Starr … I presume.” The dispatcher wiped his palms clean on his shirt then offer it again.
“Yuck––” cringed Krydal. “Of course it’s me. Who else are you expecting?”
“Great,” said Vex. He had no idea of who she was. The universe had changed right before his eyes, altering the validity of his realty down to the last molecule and he never felt anything. “I have the paperwork all ready.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” sported Rooka with a wide grin. The rodent’s teeth glistened like it was mating season. “We’ll get you there and back, promise.”
“Thanks,” said Krydal. The young beauty raised an eyebrow. She was confused, dismissed in an apparent lack of recognition. “If you don’t mind,” she said taking a step in the direction of the office, “I think I’ll keep an eye open!”
“I’d like you to meet, Jake,” said Vex, trying to impress the corporate liaison.
“Jake––” queried the young beauty.
“Our pilot,” answered Vex. Krydal looked at him curiously, noticing the wind ruffle the papers on his clipboard as she looked around for her beloved. “I thought he’d be in by now,” admitted the dispatcher, “but he’s probably lying low at Rusty’s bar. Wouldn’t mind a cool one myself this afternoon. It’s getting pretty hot in here. But don’t worry; he’ll be shipshape and ready to travel in good time. Either Rooka or me will bobtail him back here as soon as we can.” Rooka looked up at Redford with a blank stare. The row of clocks above his head, on the bulletin board next to the freight office were running backwards.
“Actually––” interrupted the young woman taking a step closer to the old trucker so she could take him by the arm. “We’d like to leave as soon as possible!”
The old trucker sat the clipboard down on the tool cart, at just the right angle to flatten Jake’s family heirloom––a wide brim hat.
“Well––” uttered Vex, “that’s a different story.”
The dispatcher did a few calculations in his head. “You’re scheduled for the day after tomorrow anyway, so there’s no heavy equipment, right?”
“Right.” Rooka set the wrench in his hand foot down on the tool cart and looked up at the corporate liaison strangely, as if he had seen her somewhere before. But he hadn’t; at least, not that he remembered.
“Just a bunch of corporate types …” mumbled the dispatcher. “I think we should be able to get you off-world say, first light tomorrow.”
“That would be fine,” surmised the corporate liaison. Krydal took the papers from Vex and headed for the door.
“Gamy,” said the rat. “There’s something not right here. I can feel it.” Krydal looked back at him for a long moment as if she recognized him then disappeared around the side of the building with a smile, and nod of her head.
Rooka licked his chops, and sighed. “To be young and in love again,” he said to himself, his mind in deep in thought. “Just wait till Jake sets his eyes on her!”
“All right––” shouted Vex. He was talking directly to the mechanic, but looked straight past him at the load of crates on the far side of the hanger. He took a moment to adjust his own inadequacies, squelching the emotion rising to the occasion and went about his business. “I’ll find Jake and burner home,” he told Rooka. “You finish loading the Chariot.”
“She’ll be ready to fly when you get back, boss.”
“Perfect––”
Vex stopped at the end of the hanger and glanced out over the horizon, never realizing the universe had altered without so much as a twitch in his eye. He no longer knew his place in the cosmos, or that Jake had entered the twilight zone. “I’ll bring back a couple of those bottles you like,” he told the mechanic.
“You’re on, boss!” said the rat. “Nothing like a bottle of foam-topped piss water, on a mountain of ice to cool a warm afternoon. What could be better?”
EIGHTEEN: Diagnostics and Judgments
• • •
Anion’s appearance was t
hat of an apparition, a ghostly entity through which her movement passed in succession, like a theologian gazing upon a dollhouse full of ants. She stepped across the boundaries of time and space, from one universe to another, and stood in Indigo’s reality. Her blue-green eyes a smear of energy, which tapered off in trails of light as bright as the beams of a well-powered torch. “So what have you discovered, Doctor?” said an odd-looking instrument, hidden within the apparatus atop a dissection table, floated across the confines of a well-rounded laboratory to gaze upon her subject, as well as reiterate her observations.
“The device is symbiotic,” said the apparition, her voice a whisper, her lips moist, yet only slightly ajar, as to mimic the words. Her deliberation was telepathic. “It reorganizes thought somehow.”
“Then the symbiont interacts with its host both through space and time?”
“The entity seems to allow the host to make connection with former incarnations,” said the blue-faced alien. The laboratory floor moved around her in a flutter, as if both she and the floor were a construct for something that wasn’t really there, but perhaps, in another dimension. Beyond her, the swell of biomass rose from a dark menagerie of twisted, spiraling appendages, weaving back and forth just beyond the threshold of the dimensional portal, at the core of the laboratory. Anion’s body rippled within the waves of distortion, her reflection visible within the outline of the biomechanical beast. Rallumn’s eyes radiated pure evil, visible just beyond the threshold of the rift. She was but the observer, trap within the curvature of the opening between worlds, hesitant to cross between the alternate existences.
