by Lee Bond
"Spare me your undoubtedly impressive knowledge of drug use in America, Granger." Samiel ran through his own memories and the memories of those younger than himself in search of anything that might indicate Zigg use in San Francisco during his original journey through the 21st century. There was no sign of the devastating drug until well after the invasion had begun.
That needed to change. And now.
"Do not leave your location." Samiel commanded brusquely. "I will call you again very shortly."
"I … understand."
As before, as always it seemed the days, Granger's voice was heavy with emotion. It was to be expected. Communication from down The Line to an ordinary human being was tiring. Samiel suspected that Delbert's life was going to come to an end sooner rather than later, all thanks to the deviation from what could've been a longer life.
***
Samiel grabbed hold of The Lines with both hands, felt them buckle and struggle against his control. It was always thus. Time disliked change, loathed transformation, but with the unholy power of the temporal incongruity raging inside of him, turning his veins into brilliant purple glass and his blood neon bright, nothing was beyond his scope.
He was Samiel. Time was his to command. In the end, it gave way, though not without a soundless kind of grinding that rumbled and beat against the insides of his immortal form. Further up The Line, Ultimate Samiel in his hypothetical domain surely moaned softly, gently, but otherwise held his peace.
San Francisco. Home to many kinds of drugs and users, both casual and addicted from the beginning of their first, sweet taste of whatever narcotic they chose, but amongst the crowd, never one brave enough to try the harder substances out there on the market.
Though not for a lack of trying before this particular, coarse revision; Ziggurat -more commonly known as Zigg- was a very hard drug with all sorts of unexpected side effects, leaving even hard-core drug users incredibly leery of taking it, even once, making some areas of North America oddly resistant. Through his minions and those nicely infected by the drug, Samiel had tried more than once to seed the West Coast in the usual, discreet fashion; WesFornia Drugs, a legitimate pharmaceuticals company that also offered treatment for ODD, also shipped Zigg all up and down the Coast, but to no lasting effect.
It’d never really been a problem, because the disaster that waited in the wings hit the East Coast hardest first …
Not this time, though. This time, he marshalled some of the extremely addicted fools and literally transplanted them across the country, temporally ripping them loose from their hovels and subway roosts and dropped them in the middle of Bay Area homeless shelters, rehab centers, anywhere. Those users he did move were so far under the dominion of the other, hidden effects caused by Ziggurat that they were, for the most part, either completely unaware of their surroundings or they just didn't care, making any claims made by them to attending physicians or caregivers or volunteers about being from the New York or Boston or even Florida and not knowing how they got there merely being obvious signs of long-term, habitual addiction to a terrible drug.
There were times -not now, and not for some time- that Samiel remembered feeling guilty about what he was doing to the people of the world, but the necessity of what he was trying to accomplish far outweighed anything as paltry as morals. The end justified the means, regardless of the path traveled. That was chapter. That was verse.
The timeline bucked and shimmied like a wild horse trying to keep from being broken by an expert ranch hand. Samiel gripped tighter, held the loose ends of this new timeline he was trying to transplant directly onto the frame already in existence.
It would work. It had to. There was no other choice. The people he'd moved and the center of addiction he was trying to promulgate had no real, direct effect on the outlying regions of the timeline, and wouldn't for some time. Anything disastrous caused between the here and now and up The Line could be handled by more 'present' versions of himself. He needed ODDities there, right there, right now.
This … faux-Nickels needed to be ripped out of The Line and tossed straight into the incongruity's violet maw.
Samiel grunted, phosphorescent sweat beading on his forehead, bright purple droplets of purified incongruity-essence dripping from his skin, transforming him into a frightful figure; with his bolted on aviator glasses and the beginnings of the bindings that'd keep him from growing too large and the freakishly colored neon sweat boiling from his pores, Samiel knew he'd be the literal depiction of fear.
There. Slowly but surely, the large addition to the base timeline he was most certain would be the one settled in. It wasn't perfect, it was the essential opposite of smooth, but … the needs justified the ends. The Universe itself would heal any imperfections, would gloriously gloss over anything terribly rough.
Samiel backed out of his connection to the temporal incongruity, grunting and gasping like some massive animal as the trails of rough power fled his abused body. He could literally feel the thickness of the incongruity being pulled from him, felt the neon glass of his veins returning to normal.
The time traveler let out a heavy gasp as the final bits purged from his system.
Terrible. Just terrible, the things he had to do. And all for a people who'd never know. Who’d never appreciate him. They’d go on with their perfect lives, all unawares that he was looking out for them.
"Nothing for it." Samiel grated, eyes straining to stay focused on the freshly altered timeline: just because he'd succeeded in layering the changes in, didn't necessarily mean the changes would stick.
Baron Samiel was not a man for prayer. Sitting as he eventually would at the far end of time, he'd done things to make a man forget what religion and faith even meant. If there was anyone to be considered a God, it was he himself and no one else. He held on to the reigns of Time Itself.
Yet, as he sat there in his chair, the temporal incongruity humming in his ears and pulsing behind him like a strange thing alive, Samiel caught himself praying.
This fresh timeline -even with the interloper calling himself Nickels poised to be in the way- was without doubt the best of all the efforts he'd ever made. This time, Drake Bishop would succumb to the changes, his scions would become willing slaves when the proper genetic passphrases were uttered and then … and then Samiel would be able to utilize The Bishop’s undeniably powerful genome to transform hordes of the mostly dead into a truly phenomenal fighting force.
Then he could send them all back down The Line.
To fight the invaders properly. On their own terms and this time, the damage would be one sided.
That was worth it, wasn't it? All the pain? All the sacrifice and all the suffering? He might be evil. Samiel wasn't entirely sure. He knew he had and would do evil things in pursuit of his goals, but it was worth it. That was how it was done, right?
Samiel held his breath until his sides and lungs ached.
Any second now. Either the changes would stick or they would not. And if they didn't, the entire frame of reference would implode.
And he'd have to start over, almost certainly from before Lissande tracked Bishop down in Haiti.
Nothing. Everything stayed the same. The changes were accepted. Everything was good. San Francisco now had a nice, solid core of drug users addicted to Ziggurat.
Time to make ‘Garth Nickels' life difficult. The Lord of the Line let out that breath he'd been holding, filling the chamber with a high-pitched whistle followed by a rude rattle in the lungs.
Samiel made the call to Granger.
***
“Granger.” Samiel listened to his own voice echo and hiss down through The Line and into the poor man’s ears and wondered again how the man was faring. It couldn’t be easy, being the minion of someone as great and as powerful as Baron Samiel. Yet, there was little room for true remorse at the agent’s suffering; he, and he alone, was at the center of that, for there’d been plenty of opportunities to back down from the crusade he’d picked up. Delbe
rt Granger had been presented with more than one windmill to tilt at, but he’d chosen the most secretive, the most hidden of all.
Knowledge came with a price tag. Everyone knew that.
Granger responded, his voice a thin, wavering thing. “I’m here.”
“How much do you remember of our previous conversation?”
“Most, if not all of it, sir.” Granger coughed into the phone, then hastily apologized. “We were talking about drug use and Zigg and then …”
Samiel ignored the man’s apology. He was being treated roughly. So long as he remained courteous, everything would be find. “Yes?”
“I was about to tell you that a recent census status covering all the major drugs in use in the San Francisco area done last year … in preparation for the upcoming science and technology convention in a few months … shows a marked increase in the use of Ziggurat. Use is up to about three percent. I did a quick search on my … my other phone while I waited for you, Baron, to get a count of the numbers of bodies that might include, and it’s … high. Close to a thousand people in the city are fiends for the stuff. Enough that it’s got the police departments worried. They’ve begun deploying their drones on a regular basis, in areas like The Tenderloin and Market Street. They’re all on high alert.”
Samiel rubbed his bloated hands together. Excellent. Simply excellent. Now, if ‘Nickels’ had chosen to operate in New York or Detroit or even one of the southern cities, like, say, Dakota, it would’ve been possible to send a literal army of Zigg-fiends to the man’s door overnight. Such things had been known to happen, spontaneously, in the past.
For the man in control of the drug supply, for a man capable of implanting subliminal messages into the narcotic substance itself … child’s play.
But alas, a thousand fiends marching en masse to Garth Nickels’ door would attract the wrong kind of attention. Samiel didn’t want anything too outré happening in San Francisco area.
Not now, not ever. Drake Bishop needed to spend time in his home city before being shuttled off to Las Vegas for the final treatments at a private clinic dedicated to dealing with the worst excesses of Ocular Degenerative Disorder, whereupon he’d be discharged, the first man in the world to be cured of the disease without having to suffer the visible stigmata of the solid eye implants. If San Francisco became too dangerous too quickly, the Bishop would flee to one of his many other homesteads all over the world. Malta, or worse, Japan, where Zigg-heads were routinely executed. A massive temporal occlusion of that order wasn’t something Samiel was all that confident he could unwind, not without causing tremendous damage to his own, personal history.
“Too great a risk.” Samiel murmured, forgetting for the moment that he was on the phone. That was happening more and more recently. It was a side effect of growing into the next version of himself. Memories –both real, unreal and in transit- flooded his cortex, making it difficult to focus on any one thing for too long. Possible and impossible histories danced and sang along the pathways of his mind at these nexus points.
“Sorry? Sir?”
Samiel waved the comment away. “Garth Nickels needs to be dealt with, Granger. You understand this, yes?”
“I do.”
Samiel felt the man’s nod. All was good. Still loyal. Granger was always loyal. A hound. Ever ready to serve his master. “I arranged for the Zigg-heads to thrive in the ordinarily austere ground that is the Bay area, Mister Granger, at great personal risk. The West Coast has always been somewhat of a dry area for my … preparation. My work in that frame of The Line is done. I cannot spend time working on manufacturing a version of Ziggurat-Alpha that’ll possess the necessary subliminal commands for these people to fall on Nickels when he is least expecting it.”
Silence fell through the two-way communication between frames. Granger’s end caught errant noise –a car passing by, a pedestrian walking near his vehicle, talking loudly on a cell- and turned the sound into a sea of overlapping, stressed echoes.
“You want me to approach them.”
It wasn’t a question, but a bold statement laced with incredulity.
“You need to, yes.” Samiel insisted.
More silence, another captured echo of strange sounds.
“I’m a Federal Agent.” Granger hissed. “I’m on fucking vacation. If I’m caught anywhere near those users, I am done for, Baron Samiel. Done for. The Federal government has had their eyes on Zigg-heads for decades now, Baron. They’re as closely watched as any terrorist cell. Ziggurat has everyone on high alert. The media is saturated with stories concerning awareness of the stuff, with everyone from Pfizer to actual government facilities claiming that a cure is right around the corner, when the truth is far different. They have no clue what’s actually in Zigg and it terrifies them. They underestimated the effects of krokodil addiction, they're not about to let it happen all over again! If I’m caught … do you want to lose me?”
A vague smile crossed Samiel’s thinning lips. More pressure was coming. Not enough to worry about, not yet, but he was close. So very close to the next iteration of consciousness. The second most ancient version of himself had chosen wisely in picking this version to deal with Granger, the Ziggurat issue, and Nickels. On the cusp as he was, concerns for a single man’s well-being suddenly dropped into the abyssal chasm of the incongruity.
“Delbert Granger, my wonderful hound. When you first caught wind of my existence, of a shadowy organization working towards some dark and nefarious goal, you never once gave up the chase, did you?” Samiel didn’t wait for Granger to stammer out an answer. “You pursued my agents relentlessly through the entirety of the Continental United States. You chased them across borders into Mexico and South America, violating all manner of laws, using the hammer of American Justice to browbeat local authorities into doing as you wanted. You ignored everything else that came your way. You dismissed breadcrumbs left by me, breadcrumbs that would’ve led you to other secrets, other mysteries. Why, you even elected to not learn the names of the men responsible for redoubtable JFK’s assassination in favor of learning who I am, what I do, and how.”
“What does my tenacity have to do with anything?” Granger demanded, just this side of openly hostile. He so hated to be reminded of the rabbit hole he’d dug for himself.
“It’s just this, dear Granger.” Samiel smiled again, felt his upper lip split, allowing a thin dribble of blood to course through the open wound and down his wide, wide chin. “You’ve done the same thing again, only this time, much, much worse. Before, when you hunted me, you thought you were free, but by the time I became aware of you, I’d learned of your potential, and chose to make use of you. The course of the rest of your life, from that moment until your death in 2042 … that was guaranteed. A certitude. Non-negotiable. But you inserted yourself into the doings of another time traveler, a man who … until this repetition of History … had never existed. That changed everything. About your life. I can’t see where you’re headed. Can’t see when you die. Every moment you persist, you dangle in the balance between alive and dead. Because of this, dear hound, loyal doggie … I hold no concern over you. Not truly. You are either of use to me, as in the matter of conscripting a small handful of Zigg-heads to avail themselves of this man calling himself Nickels, or you are not of use. In which case, I will avail myself of you. Are we clear?”
More silence. True silence this time. Granger had the phone pressed tightly against the fabric of his jacket, or perhaps the car seat. Baron Samiel imagined the poor human agent, sitting in his vehicle, suddenly and overwhelmingly confronted by the stupidity of his actions. Maybe he was wishing he’d stayed ignorant all those decades ago, when he’d been a bright young star set to burn through the heavens, or maybe he was being more realistic.
Maybe he was wishing he’d ignored the tattered remnants of a previous and non-existent History in which he’d been approached to dispatch Nickels with that hacked predator drone. Maybe he was wishing that for once in his life, he’d ig
nored the threads leading to a greater mystery.
Samiel sometimes felt the same, that he’d … not done as he’d done, either. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be here, in this place. Doing what he was doing.
Then he remembered that he hadn’t been given …
Granger’s thin, pain-filled voice resonated through the speakers. “I understand, Baron Samiel. I will approach some Zigg-heads, encourage them to deal with Nickels. I’ll use the construction site as incentive. The man is bringing in loads of stuff all the time now. Thousands of dollars’ worth of wiring and … it’s. I understand.”
“Not too many, Granger.” Samiel cautioned. “If there is a concerted attack on that property, local authorities will lose their minds. San Francisco must remain as peaceful as it always has been. Say … three. Yes. Three Zigg-heads will be more than enough. That kind of strength and mammalian rage should be chaotic enough for a time traveler to miss, to be unprepared for. Are we clear, Granger?”
“As cut glass, Baron.” Granger’s voice was leaded, dead. “As cut glass.”
“And the … language?” Samiel asked, voice curling through the ether. “Still strong enough?”
“Yes, Baron Samiel. I’ve been keeping up with my efforts. I’d prefer not to use Zigg-heads, though. It gets harder and harder to deal with th…”
Samiel laughed. “Your preferences aren’t a factor in anything beyond which type of stool you wish to drop. Now. Be about my good and great works, loyal doggie.”
Baron Samiel ended the comm and stared off into the distance, eyes seeing things only someone who’d stared deep into the chasm of the incongruity could see, a distant smile curling his lips. He didn’t even want to watch the channel synced to the so-called Nickels.
That unwavering green light tainted with carnelian red was going to flicker out any moment now.
