by Lee Bond
One of the light-paths was completely occluded by electrician’s tape, though. It was a new tactic, a course he didn’t think he’d ever really set himself down before because it was hard not to focus on all the minutiae of Drake Bishop’s life and eventual transferal to something more … useful.
It’d come to him in a dream. Or maybe it was ‘Extra Ultimate Samiel’, still working on the great scheme, risking only this quiet, whispered idea; his thoughts, his internal voice … they were thunder and lightning and … awful. Didn’t matter. The idea was solid, had it’s principles in the very firm and unshakeable scientific fact of physics itself.
Baron Samiel was treating Drake Bishop as an electron.
It made sense. Drake Bishop’s historical existence acted one way when he was on his own, doing his thing, which in the 21st century was being an idiot with too much money, too much charm, and too much time on his hands. Exposure to the drug cocktail that’d begin the slow but sure alteration of his genetic markers was guaranteed at this point. That particular moment had been happening forever and ever, just in slightly different ways and with slightly different effects.
But it was after that.
After that, when Baron Samiel put his impressive will into guiding the affected and infected Bishop down the very particular path that he needed to travel so that future generations of the man’s lineage would be changed but not so much that the wondrous, chimerical element that made the Bishop Line so … fundamentally powerful dissipated beneath the deluge of Ziggurat's unkind properties.
Without the glorious DNA-quirk, his footsoldiers would never be truly capable of pushing back the Invaders as they needed to be. Direct manipulation spawned so many errors. It was ludicrous. They bounced and tore through the timeline like savage piranha, chewing into the underlying firmament of his plan and reducing everything to tattered shreds of flesh and exposed bone.
So they were trying something different. Something new. Something –with the arrival of the unnamed time traveler, a man Samiel was going to be dealing with very shortly- risky.
He was going to let Lissande handle things on her own. She was down there in the time stream. She was a part of history now, in all it’s iterations. Maybe her presence, her whispers, wouldn’t affect whatever mysterious force hovered over Bishop’s life, protecting him. She knew what needed to be done. She was his best agent in the field, better than all the other assets in that time combined and if there was anyone who could work Drake over into the man they all needed him to be before the invasion came, it was Lissande Amour.
“This will work.” Samiel confided in himself. “This is the best course of action available to me. She has been loyal and true since the very beginning, when I scooped her up out of the blasted wastelands and made her into the goddess she is today. Lissande will not fail me. But Granger … Granger is doing nothing but failing. I am going to have to address these failures through an earlier version of myself. Such risk. Such danger. No choice though, the man’s foolish disembarkation from the normal flow of events has created something with the potential to be disastrously unstable.”
***
Granger jerked awake a few seconds before the phone rang, that insidious and familiar dread washing backwards filling him with mounting sickness. The Federal Agent fished the phone out of a pant's pocket and stared at it as it's shrill tone ground through him, sensing that whichever version of the Baron called, it wasn’t too far ‘up The Line’.
Good. He didn’t think he could talk to the version that’d called him up to discuss destroying Garth Nickels again. The man’s wrath combined with the eddying echoes of his power would, at this point, give him a goddamn jammer right there on the spot. There were rumors that there was a Samiel even further up, an entity so powerful you could scarcely imagine his abilities. Granger didn't know if there was any truth to the story, but either way, he prayed he never caught that version's attentions.
The Fed considered not answering. Just … letting it ring, until the sound really did give him that heart attack. Or an embolism, or an infarction. Then Garth’s legally employed paramilitary force operating under the guise of ‘security officers’ would find him dead, in a car littered with grotesque healthy food choice wrappers and empty scotch bottles. Such an ignominious end to a man with a skillset that should’ve launched him into the stratosphere of governmental security.
Where would he be now, if he'd ignored the carrot? Head of the CIA? Running point on some new Federal task force, like the slip of a girl hounding Garth's digital tracks? Comptroller for Global Securities? Homeland?
Something new, something secret? Oh, the possibilities had been endless, there, at the beginning of his career.
Granger flipped the phone open. “Here.”
“Are you familiar with the basic principles of time travel, Agent Delbert Granger?” Samiel’s voice was an acid-wash hiss tingling inside the ear. Before giving the other man a chance to answer, the man resumed. “Of course not, at least, not the true principles. I juggle multiple streams here up The Line, Granger, weeding out those ones that create or promote outcomes I find disadvantageous to my primary goal, like an old woman at a loom, piecing together millions of threads of wool into something wondrous. But, like someone watching the seamstress while she works, you cannot know what I am creating until it is done."
Granger wanted to demand what that primary goal was, knowing that if he did, Samiel might very well tell him, and so he kept his lips tight. Tight as if they’d been sewn shut by a coroner. He licked dry, chapped lips. No. No more secrets for him.
“One of the more interesting aspects of time travel and my abilities is that I am able to … stand by … and allow a person’s whole entire existence to unspool before my very eyes, from birth to death and even beyond, should that person’s efforts in life be profound enough to affect things after he or she is gone.” Samiel paused to let that sink in. “It is glorious, in it’s way, a truly humbling thing. I do it for all the important people in my personal life, such as it is, and for those movers and shakers in the world that might have cause or reason to suddenly impact the secret game I am playing. I’ve done it for you, for Drake Bishop, for hundreds of people over the endlessly evolving millennia.”
Granger knew what was coming. He readied himself.
“I’ve even done it for this man, this man I do not yet know.” Samiel’s tone indicated that he expected to know the identity of The Man by the end of the conversation. “It was difficult, but I managed to track his life force, to begin charting the ripples. It took longer and was more demanding of my time and efforts than I like, especially given that I have an asset deviated from his own timeframe to observe him. And yet, for all that effort, all that personal suffering, I find I still do not know his name. I am as intimate with him as I can be, nearly a lover in the night, but ... he remains anonymous to me, Delbert Granger.
And that is a genuine problem. For all of us. For my work. For you. Here I am, entwined around this man's life, curled inside him, and ignorant of that which matters most. Tell me, Granger, and quick as if your life depends on it. Do you have a name for me yet, or shall I unspool your life and spread your accomplishments to others?"
“Nickels.” Granger stammered, hand aching with the pressure of holding the phone to his ear when every instinct said to throw it as far away as possible. “Garth Nickels.”
The moment the name fled his lips, a bitter chill wind, direct from some place colder than the Arctic, flooded through the phone and into his vehicle, throwing frost on the windows and gripping Granger tight.
Used to this sort of treatment, Granger reached out and snapped the heater on. He'd gotten an ancient four-car land tank made around about the time America'd been strutting across the global stage, so while gas mileage was for shit, the volcanic wave of heat flooding the car that moment blasted Samiel's shock into tatters.
Samiel paused. When he spoke, his voice was … mixed. “Causal echo? Happenstance? No. No. Impossible. C
ouldn’t be. There are some things that are still impossible.”
Regardless, Samiel shut his eyes for a moment and considered all the lost timelines, those little scraps, those bits and pieces of History that had –for one reason or another- been weeded from the garden that was his grand undertaking, looking for any signs of this man, this … alleged ‘Garth Nickels’.
It was hard, because he was now –this time- literally working from memory and memory alone. His search was aided by the incongruity, yet sloughing through the detritus deep in his brain was rough going. There were many corners and alleys and dark thoughts that were best avoided at all times, yet the congruence of names was too unlikely to ignore altogether. He could always reach further up The Line …
No. There was nothing. A man like him … he would leave different footprints.
He wouldn't … wouldn't hide. He would be bold as brass tacks under a spotlight.
No. It was nothing. It wasn’t the same man. It … couldn't be.
Time to dig deeper, but without alerting the younger versions, to see if he hadn't told a story or two, in one of those lost timelines, to pass the time, into the wrong ears; as he, down in the 21st, worked to disgrace Jim Seeker in the 25th, so too could his temporal enemy be doing the same, with that name.
“Baron?” Granger’s voice was cracked and hollow on the other end of The Line. “B-baron? Are you there? What did you mean by causal echo?”
“Never mind.” Samiel snapped, embarrassed he’d let things get out of control. Should he make an effort to compensate Granger for the lapse? No again. The man had violated the sanctity of his lifeline. What came to him now –and until he died and was brought back again- was on him and no one else. “What is this … ‘Nickels’ doing? Is he doing anything?”
Whatever it was, if it was anything, it wasn't temporally important. Which was now suddenly deeply disconcerting. That … that was how the man worked.
Samiel bit his grotesque tongue, smacked himself in the side of the head. Couldn’t be him. Was never him. Wouldn’t be him. That was all … all behind him now. Had been for … for … eternities. He’d fallen and fallen and fallen so very far and he’d checked to see if anyone else had fallen with him.
And he knew … knew … that he was as alone as alone could be!
“Well, sir, from this end of things, he’s just building this … he calls it an arcade, but he’s also founder, CEO and chief scientist for a company called Changetech. He’s spent a considerable amount of time and effort securing money and destroying other companies worldwide. He caught the attention of the Fraud Squad … er, sorry, Baron, of a Special Agent attached to a new organization that roots out and deals with men and women involved in tremendously circumspect financial transactions. Typically the squad goes after organized crime, but they also deal with, hrmm, what … um, emergent technologies. Guess they're using supercomputers to fiddle with the stock market now. So, that. He caught their eye first day, and they're making his life complicated."
Granger’s voice was growing stronger now. Good. Samiel didn’t want the old man to stroke out. That would be tremendously awkward and would quite possibly require an older version of himself to iron things out and the last thing this version of himself wanted to do was reach out and upwards …
“I can see all that. It is impressive, yet it matters not what he’s doing. Everything thus far is nothing that wouldn’t happen on it’s own. He is, will, and has only ever revealed technology that would’ve come out only a few weeks or months from where he is doing it right now. What about … other things? Anything resembling the few pieces of advanced machinery you’ve seen while working for me? Masers? Stun tubes? Plasma grenades?”
Granger made a strange sound. “Maybe he’s only interested in making money. I’m not terribly smart when it comes to emergent technology and all of that, but he genuinely seems very good at what he’s doing. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s all he wants. Is to make money and make America strong again.”
“In less than four months, America won’t be America, you pale, trembling buffoon!” Samiel let the words rush out of him in a hot, angry torrent, suddenly caring very little what happened to Granger down The Line. The whole of the world was in dire danger, not just one paltry accumulation of states that could barely agree they were connected by land, let alone that they might share similar religious and political affiliations! Why couldn’t anyone see that? Why did everyone, in every timeline, try to stop him? Couldn’t they see? Couldn’t they understand? The work he was doing, the pain he was putting himself through … if he could walk away from the travesty, he would. But that wasn’t the way! That was never the way.
Once you took the job, you followed the job to the end. No matter what.
Samiel wished he could rub his eyes, but they’d been sealed away first thing. The very moment the invisible pressure had come crushing at him. He could only imagine what it was like at the very furthest edge of The Line, way, way up, where the him that hid from everyone lived. All that pressure, all that containment … all that …
Samiel blinked. He brought himself back online and on track. “I can’t make you forget what I said but I can assure you that bringing that statement to the attention of anyone who might be in the position to make changes to National policy will haunt you for the rest of your days. And when I am talking about the rest of your days, Delbert Granger, I am talking about an infinity of days. Are we clear?”
“Y-yes.” Granger, poor, poor mortal, cringing in his car seat, voice full of terror. Perfect.
“Here is the problem I am having with this other time traveler, this improbably-named Garth Nickels. If you were better at your job, you’d realize it as well.” Samiel looked at Bishop’s timeline, just for a second, and was unsurprised to see it taped up. He hadn’t done it, but it’d been done, which meant one of him had. How long ago had that been?
He shook his head. Never mind. He put his eyes instead on Garth’s line. Mostly green with an unremarkable yet unforgivable wavering red tinge. Sometimes it was brilliant, sometimes it was mute, almost like a long, slow heartbeat, but it was there, all the same. It was there before and it was there after, somehow implying that not only had the man survived the invasion –possible, quite, quite possible given the heroic and insane measures Humanity had taken to win- but that he remained open for business.
In a world completely destroyed.
In a world where it would take two hundred years for concepts like ‘business’ and ‘technology’ and ‘homes’ to regain any meaning whatsoever, The Line belonging to poorly named Nickels suggested that he was still there, in the radioactive wasteland that San Francisco would become, churning out … whatever it was. Selling quarters to ODDities and freaks so they could play … Pac-Man and Frogger.
Just as unlikely as the parallel in names, that was even more impossible.
Something was … wrong with ‘Nickels’ timeline. Almost as if it was stuck in stasis, yet still functioning.
“If this other time traveler were only interested in turning a fast buck, in inventing new household gadgets and ‘making America great again’, he would’ve chosen a more apt location. New York. California proper. Tokyo. Shanghai. Hyderabad. Not San Francisco, not in that location. That was a deliberate, targeted attack against my operation, and were you privy to the kind of information I am, you would understand that more clearly.” Samiel shook his head, felt the queer pressure along the jawline and felt a small tremor of fear.
Was it time already? Couldn’t be. A few more personal days, surely?
“No.” The time traveler resumed, defiantly. “No. It isn’t that simple. Given what is coming, given what he must know about the future of the world, he’s attempting the same thing I am. And that cannot be. It cannot be allowed. He must be stopped. Even though he’s proven adept at undoing his own death, we must begin to take risks. We must root him out, excise him from the canals of time, a dentist ripping out a wisdom tooth. Do you understand?”
Regardless of Granger's reluctant acquiescence, Samiel shut his eyes a second time, this time to check on the incongruity's progress in checking to see if he'd … made mention of things better left unsaid.
Inconclusive.
There was, it seemed, a limit to the incongruity's powers after all. Granted, those initial memories, those first, faltering steps of a primordial time traveler, learning the trade, they'd been clumsy and awkward as hell, and written over countless thousand of times since then.
Samiel decided it was a mirror of the ploy he was using against Jim Seeker. Had to be. It was the only thing that made sense. Time travelers were a finicky breed, it seemed, playing from the same book.
He'd told tales of the before times, to someone, that was all. And maybe he'd sounded like a madman, and maybe those tales had stuck, and they'd been told at parties and dinners and between friends, until, somewhere in the blasted future, someone in the right place at the right time had heard them as well, and connected them back to the source and …
Had chosen to adopt the mantle of Nickels.
Yes. That made perfect sense.
Samiel wondered … who'd learned the tactic from who, then?
"Very good." Samiel nodded, then felt momentarily stupid for doing so. He couldn't wait for the moment when these last few dribs and drabs of human convention began to fall away and he could focus on the job and nothing else. "Are you familiar with Ziggurat?"
Granger paused, wondering what was wrong with Baron Samiel. Of course he knew about Ziggurat, and the freaks that took it, and what they … what they did. But now was not the time to call his 'employer' out on a memory lapse, so he played the game.
"A narcotic, sweeping the East Coast. Brutal thing. Worse than Oxy or Fentanyl. Serious side effects." Granger's voice was quizzical. "Hasn't found purchase here on the West Coast. People on this side of the country tend to stick the usual drugs like heroin, meth, cocaine. Mariju …"
