by Lee Bond
Garth shrugged. “Then what’s the problem with sending me back one more time?”
“There is none.” The Emperor wished he could see where Garth was headed. Of course, he knew what Drake would suggest; dig through the man’s neural pathways to divine the most probable course of action and move to counter.
It’d be a cold day in Hell before that happened. Sparks knew he was smarter than Garth. It was just a matter of getting the man to a place in his narrative that wasn’t rife with so much danger.
“Then send me back. One more time.” Garth snapped his fingers. “Tell ya what. I’ll sweeten the pot. If I fail this time, we’ll sit back down at the drawing board, see if we can’t come up with something more effective. That’s what you’ve wanted this whole time, right? You saw how impossible the situation I’d given myself was, right?
Eddie could feel Drake’s admiration and wanted to scream in frustration. “And what would you like if you somehow manage to succeed where –in the last solid day of efforts- you’ve done nothing but fail?”
“I get to pick my start point. Nothing too outrageous. Say … within fifteen minutes of initial success?”
“The Baron won’t give up.”
“Of course he won’t, but as a time-traveler, he has to be aware of more than one way to do things.” Garth smiled. He’d gotten the Emperor to bite. “I know this location was his prime spot to do … whatever … it was he plans on doing but I also bet there’s a few more spots around town that’ll do the job, just not as prettily. It’s what I would do. Did. Always have more than one location to get the job done, or you’re fucked. Besides that, I can only imagine the kind of damage this continual rinse-and-repeat cycle is doing to that bastard’s future. He’s going to have to start nailing things down sooner rather than later, I bet. So we got a deal, Emperor-for-Life?”
Eddie ran through the permutations as he understood them. Here was a perfect moment for him to cheat, to literally force N’Chalez into forfeiting the game by causing him to barter for some of his old Kin’kithal powers. There was every chance the man might not even realize what’d been done; Baron Samiel was a man of immense power, powers that Garth had never really had an opportunity to fully appreciate, what with him being the puppet of the Ushbet M’Tai, so if whatever the man planned now were to fail, who would be the wiser?
The Emperor looked over at Spur, who stood, stoic and impassive. It was a side of Drake that Eddie didn’t like. Five thousand years in the guise of the thinking android and in the cruel employ of his viperish family had taught the man how to hide his true feelings in a way Eddie found worrisome. It was hard not to see that the man wanted Garth to not only succeed in this particular part of the venture, but to win overall, and that was something else that bothered Eddie quite a bit.
Who in their right mind sided with a man that’d essentially driven one of his children completely stark raving mad? For that was surely what’d become of Jordan Bishop, there at the end. And with the madness set to spill over into Tenerek's cities, there seemed to be no end in sight for Bishop's plague of cruelty.
Emperor-for-Life Etienne clapped his hands and the auditorium filled with brassy horns to announce the formalization of their bet. “It is agreed. Beat the Hellfire missile and you may choose your new starting point to within fifteen minutes of the initial moment of survival. Fail, and you return here, and we renegotiate.”
“Pinky swear, bro.” Garth winked at the Emperor-for-Life moments before vanishing.
***
Garth opened his eyes and the mental timer that’d popped into being round about the one hundredth time he’d tried –and failed- to deal head on with the missile set to destroy his life popped into place, almost like a HUD.
Good times.
Suspecting that the Emperor or Spur or someone in their employ was always around, sort of behind the scenes, keeping a metaphorical eye on things, Garth stretched his back and arms, saying, “See, Emp, here’s the thing.”
Garth scooped down to pick up that algebra book he’d booted across the room nearly twenty-four hours ago. It was old and dusty and stank like rotten paper; this school and a few other buildings in the area were among the hardest hit by the sudden recession that’d torn through America like, well, like Hellfire, and in the rapid restructuring that’d followed less than a month later, they’d been pushed aside like unwanted children.
“I realized right away,” he continued, moving towards one of the big windows, “just what was going on, but I thought I could beat the guy remote-controlling the drone’s reaction times. I thought if I could get down there fast enough, I could deflect the missile without him seeing me or anything like that, but of course I couldn’t, because I’m not who I used to be.”
Garth put his head against the grimy glass and –against his wishes- a whoop of excitement blurted out of him.
There, right there, hovering less than three feet above ground level, blocking traffic on all sides and generating an awful lot of attention from the locals, was the predator drone that’d been making his life a living hell for the last day. Just a hair under ten feet long and comprised of the most durable and lightweight materials available on the market, the pale white drone looked like nothing more than an overcomplicated paper airplane, but with a few noticeable differences; in addition to the one Hellfire missile clamped to its belly waiting to be launched at a static target, this one was outfitted with next-gen flechette guns mounted on the wings. Capable of firing up to a thousand razor-sharp needles per second with astonishing accuracy up to two hundred feet away, this class of Predator drone was the kind of weapon you used on foreign soil to pacify unruly insurgents.
Not the sort of thing you’d expect to find on American soil, even with the current climate being less than hospitable for politicians and businessmen responsible for sending one of the most powerful countries in the world into a tailspin.
Putting his weapon of choice on the windowsill, Garth pried open the window with a little extra effort. Years of being unmaintained had warped the wooden frames surrounding the dirty piece of glass, but in the end, he got it open under thirty seconds.
He picked the book back up. “You see, you’re right. I am dealing with someone who travels through time. He’s got the luxury of trying over and over and over again to get things his way. I guess I do, as well, only I’ve got to start thinking smarter than I have been.”
Garth easily imagined the Emperor-for-Life, sitting in front of a giant viewscreen, eating popcorn and drinking a soda, watching the events unfold with something akin to fury burning away in his belly and couldn’t resist a sarcastic, fourth-wall-breaking smile.
This plan was all thanks to the Emperor himself.
“By now, you’ve prolly figured out what I’m going to do, but it’s gotta be done just the right way, you see.” Garth leaned out the window, book in one hand, other hand gripping the solid edge of the building as tightly as possible. “Right now, legally, that there is a drone being about it’s business, doing nothing but freaking the locals right the fuck out and scanning this building. In one minute and three seconds, it is a drone firing a Hellfire missile into a building occupied by a single occupant who ain’t doin’ nothin’ but looking over his recent acquisition.”
People down below were recording the living daylights out of the drone’s presence, catching it on everything from smartphones to actual video recorders. From this moment on, everything the drone did would be irrefutable and provable in an actual court of law. Twitter and Vine and Facebook Live and prolly even Soundcloud and 4Chan would be on fire thanks to this footage.
“In less than thirty seconds, that drone is going to fire its payload into my building and turn it into ruins. Can’t have that, because I need this place because the Baron really needs this place. Soooooo … in three, two, one.”
Garth flipped the book out the window, skillfully aiming for the rotor blades that kept the deadly thing aloft. His aim and timing were flawless, with the book strik
ing the blades a microsecond after the missile left it’s clamps but before it was well on its way to destroying the building.
What happened next happened in very fast order and would ultimately take careful scrutiny of all available video sources, but thusly;
The book hit the rotor blades just as the missile started moving, causing the drone to attempt to adjust to the sudden and inexplicable downward motion of the backend by giving it a bit of gas, as they say. Unable to compensate for the movement of the rocket barreling its way down the undercarriage of the frame and the upward pressure being exerted across its length, the engines screamed and tried harder still, resulting only in the rocket being launched directly into the sky before the drone itself flipped over on its back like a beached whale.
“So that’s what a whale looks like when it’s beached, hey?” Garth pursed his lips. The people down below weren’t moving. Were, in fact, being typical stupid Americans; rather than realizing that a downed predator drone was still really super dangerous and was at that moment recording all of their faces for later, when bodies needed identifying, they were coming in closer.
A few of the younger people in the crowd –mid-twenties from the looks of them, idiots dressed in surfer fashion complete with long, fashionable hair- looked like they were getting ready to hop on the fucking thing so they could get some awesome pictures for their Facebook profiles.
“Christ on a crutch!” Garth took off from the window, ears quirking when they detected the faint sounds of sirens ripping through the streets. He hadn’t died and the drone hadn’t executed the Baron’s wishes, so the Emperor’s simulation was moving on with the next reasonable step in the game: police presence and an inquiry into why a drone was randomly targeting a building that’d been deserted for years.
But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Just because the Baron hadn’t sent someone or something else down to this moment in time to deal with the impossible didn’t mean that he hadn’t or wouldn’t; odds were strong that the time-traveler was that very moment considering other options.
If there was a way for him to deal with whatever changes the loss of SlimJim’s was evoking, Samiel would drop the matter for the time being.
If there wasn’t, though…
Garth reckoned it’d be more than misappropriated predator drones. He wasn’t entirely up-to-date on the Baron’s temporally misplaced assets at this particular point in time –wouldn’t be … wasn’t … hadn’t been really, until his experiences with Lissande- but there was one thing Garth knew for certain.
If there were any ODDities in the neighborhood, getting started was going to be really tough.
It took just a few seconds to get down the stairs –he was a professional at that, now- and just a few seconds more for him to shoulder his way through the front doors. Garth hit the steps just in time to see a couple of those stupid young adults being carted away in handcuffs, the expressions on their face suggesting they didn’t care because they’d gotten those awesome selfies after all.
***
Baron Samiel stared at the screens, mutely and pensively steepling his fingers. Each light was caught in stasis, frozen and locked down as only someone who possessed the power to manipulate time in all it’s facets could manage.
Behind him, the shimmering, there-but-not-quite-there purple chunk of strange matter he called the temporal incongruity flexed and bulged as it strained to hold everything tight; more than doubling someone, more than shoving someone down The Line or yanking them back up, holding his ‘personal’ timeline –a hair over five thousand years of experience- in check resulted in massive drains.
Once he was done assessing this situation, it’d be some time before he was able to directly manipulate events in the past, and it rankled like a canker in his mouth.
SlimJim’s had been a facet of that past for many thousands of years. Both the first and the last of all the incongruous spots in the history of the world thanks to his very unique approach to time, that nightclub was integral to the whole of his operation, and not just because of it’s proximity to his most important acquisition; there were … places … on the skin of Earth where the rules of physics, of time and space, were … flexible, different somehow.
Not much, not enough for gravity to fail or anything like that, but enough for something like the temporal incongruity’s influence to worm through, spreading like a disease that eventually corrupted the continuum enough for his most special children to be shuttled back and forth like so many cattle.
There was that one, the one in Vegas, one in Washington DC, and of course, the one in the Amazon Basin, but without that first/last one in San Francisco …
“Not all lost, of course.” Baron wrinkled his nose.
The divergence or convergence of substrata energies that were responsible for the weakening of the rules at the prime location radiated outwards, sometimes for miles and miles in all directions, a quirk that Baron Samiel often manipulated to his own benefit; these outward spirals were –to him, at any rate- like bolts of jagged lightning sleeting through the underbelly of the cosmos, and through them –if the need was strong enough- his children could be slotted this way and that in the blink of an eye.
Teleportation, rough and ready even on the strong bodies and minds of his children, but sometimes, it was necessary.
The spot in San Francisco was the strongest of all Maybe it had something to do with his arrival, or maybe it was just one of those things, but the spiraling, radiating cracks of lightning spreading out from his most cherished SlimJim’s locale went wider and further than all the rest.
“Just not … optimal.” Behind him, the incongruity shifted uneasily inside its miraculous stony exterior. He had perhaps another ten minutes of consideration before he needed to turn time back on.
More than enough time to fully map out the new projections. It was going to be a huge piece of work, if he decided to go with a different location for SlimJim’s, one that would occupy the majority of his forces in a way they’d never been used.
If this was the opening gambit from some never-before-seen or imagined player in this game of temporal chess, Baron Samiel had to tip his hat in congratulations, because as far as opening moves went, it was a masterclass stroke.
***
“Looks like you’re going to need more than a tow truck for this sonofabitch.” Garth shouted cheerily as he moved his way towards the officer that looked to be the most in charge out of everyone; now that the yahoos had been arrested and driven off site, the other boys in blue were more or less just kind of standing there, staring at the beached predator drone, scratching their collective heads.
Officer Brutowski looked up from his notes and took a reflexive step backwards before quickly recovering his composure. It wasn’t very often you were approached by someone who fell into the ‘giant’ category. Quite often, it was the other way around, and only with extreme reticence.
“And you would be?”
“Garth Nickels.” Garth jerked a thumb at the dilapidated school. “I’m the owner of the property right there.”
Brutowski nodded, reading through his notes. “Ah. Right. Witnesses say you’re the one who tossed the book out the window. Landed in the, er, drone’s …”
“Flight thingy, yeah.” Garth shot daggers at a few of the lingering witnesses who’d so readily fingered him. Of course they had. This was Paranoid America, worse even than the Cold War when everyone thought everyone else was a Communist. In the here and now, friends and neighbors could quite easily turn the tables on you if they thought there’d be something of value in it for them.
“Now why,” Brutowski licked his lips, pen at the ready, “would you want to do something like that? These things cost about a half million bucks, y’know. And that’s before inflation.”
“Am I giving a statement?” Garth inquired innocently.
“Would you like to?” Brutowski bounced the question back to the burly guy without missing a beat. “I mean, before the officials
get here? Might go a long way to show you’ve been cooperative, here on the ground, I mean. You know how the suits can be, right?”
The fifteen minute timer Garth had started up in his mind just after walking through the front doors flicked down a minute. Twelve to go before he lost the ability to choose his new start point. He should’ve picked the moment just as the doors had banged open, because now he was locked into a conversation tree with Officer Brutowski here and that was going to eat up a lot –if not all- of his time.
Making matters worse, the cop wasn’t wrong about the official officials and their likeliest attitude upon arriving at a scene where one of their prized drones had been flipped up on it’s backside like a pregnant whale. Like as not they’d be even more steamed to learn that it’d delivered it’s Hellfire payload straight up into the air, putting their conversation tree in the ‘extremely hostile, we are looking to fuck someone over in a big fucking way’ category.
And with his super mojo all the way missing, it wasn’t like he’d be able to Jedi mind trick them into leaving him alone.
Fuck my life. Garth cleared his throat just as Brutowski started getting antsy.
Eleven minutes.
“Okay, yeah, so.” Garth nodded as the cop’s pen started moving. “I’m a legal citizen here, so don’t forget to mention that. I’ve got all the info on my PIDdy, which I’ll give up in a sec. So, I’m from Switzerland, right, and I decide to move to America because there are all these opportunities for guys like me …”
“Like you?” Brutowski hoped he kept the irritation out of his voice. He had a kid who wasn’t smart enough to get into any of the colleges in the area but was smart enough to know he didn’t want to be a grunt in the workforce like his old man.
“Uh, yeah. I … invent stuff. And I’m a programmer. I’m here to … take advantage of the tax breaks and incentives. To help.” Garth caught the glimmer in Brutowski’s eye.
“And if you make a ton of money in the process, more power to you, right?” Brutowski cursed himself and raised a hand in apology. “Sorry, Nickels, not your beef. We got ourselves into this mess, and I’m reminded by my wife that we need to be grateful for people like you, coming here to see what can be done. Let’s get back on track here.”
